


sharp shock to your soft side

by agivise



Series: dandelion knives [1]
Category: The Bright Sessions (Podcast)
Genre: Character Study, Friendship, Gen, Redemption, Stream of Consciousness, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-23
Updated: 2017-12-03
Packaged: 2018-12-05 18:50:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 22,580
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11584020
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/agivise/pseuds/agivise
Summary: The universe is a cruel, unforgiving bitch, and honestly, he's a little sick and tired of it. Sure, he deserves it or whatever, but still, totally uncool, universe. Real poor timing.Alternately: Damien learns a little empathy. Mark deals with the backlash.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> hey guys!! i wanted to write something and this is the perfect excuse to do so. basically in this fic i'm gonna play around with grey morality and an unreliable narrator and just try to have fun writing it.
> 
> there's nothing i really have to warn for, no violence or noncon elements, some canonical poor mental health only, don't worry about it. and i only hurt damien a little bit. i do swear a lot though. if you have and specific warnings you want me to put up for future chapters, feel free to tell me in the comments. 
> 
> thanks for reading!!!

i.

Damien isn't a bad person, per se.

Alright, so maybe he's a pretty shitty person. Sometimes. Most of the time. But contrary to the ridiculous super-villain facade he's put up, well, his whole life, he certainly isn't evil. He could, objectively speaking, be a far worse person and get away with it a lot easier. He could be... some sort of serial killer, he guesses? A puppy kicker? The whole kidnapping thing makes it a little hard for him to think of worse scenarios for his own morality. 

In his defense, he's mostly only kidnapping Mark for the greater good. Sure, it didn't exactly start out with such pure intentions, and maybe he did still want to find someone who would finally relate to the inherent lifetime of grief bound to his abilities, but he could definitely have more than one way to try to validate it all. After all, Dr. B practically led Mark right into the hellish rat trap that is the AM, so it'd be perfectly reasonable to assume she'd do it again if she got him back, under duress from the organization or not. He wants that to not happen. He wants Mark to be safe, on the road, with him. And, as an unavoidable consequence of Damien's powers, Mark wants that too. And so that's how it is. Not his fault at all. Damien wants Mark to stay, so he stays. It's for the best. He knows it is. Except...

Except tonight, they're sitting cross-legged on their respective generic crappy motel beds in Generic Crappy Motel number four-gazillion-and-three, and Mark's rambling about his dearest sister 'Joanie' (a conversation which he's having only a little unwillingly), and for a second he's got this look in his eyes like someone just stabbed him in the heart with a rusty butter knife, and – god dammit. Damn it all. 

In that moment, Damien wants more than anything for Mark to be happy. More than he wants Mark to stay with him. More than he wants Mark to share things with him. Even more than he wants him to be safe.

"Oh, fuck you," he says abruptly to a very confused Mark, who had been in the middle of some random deeply personal monologue about his life that Damien had accidentally drawn out of him.

"Excuse me?"

He sighs and shuts his eyes for a long moment while Mark just stares, oblivious to his current state of internal turmoil. Damien's hand clenches and un-clenches as he desperately tries to convince himself that no, this is a decision that doesn't personally benefit you at all, don't do this, don't you fucking dare – but it's too late, he's already grabbed his phone from his pocket and chucked it unceremoniously over to still-confused Mark, who's so surprised by this action he almost lets it fall to the ugly grey-carpeted floor before catching it. He might as well have a big flashing neon sign saying "I haven't got the slightest idea of what's going on" over his head, followed by several dozen question marks, as far as Damien is concerned.

"Just fucking shut up and call her or whatever. You've probably figured all my bullshit out anyway. Password's all zeros." Damien says quickly, which is followed by a very painful pang of regret, so he decides to stand up and go outside and just – just leave for a while and cool down before his powers make Mark do something stupid like break the phone against the wall or punch him in the face or something.

He pokes his head back into the room for a moment before he shuts the door. "Also, you're about to be really fucking mad at me in a bit, but I want you to not be mad at me, so your emotions are gonna feel real fucked up for a while. Just fair warning. Not my fault," he finishes, and pulls the door closed behind him, realizing just as the latch clicks that he should definitely not be breathing this fast and his heart should probably chill the fuck out and he tells himself again and again, you want this, you want this, and it's true and it hurts and oh god. Oh, god, Mark is calling Dr. B, what if he tells her where they are? What if she relays every call straight to the AM and they'll go after them and try to hurt Mark again and he needs to sit down immediately before he has a fucking panic attack.

He picks a spot on the ground, against the corrugated metal wall just outside of their motel room, the night's air still soaked in heavy late-summer heat. It smells like gasoline and rain, but it looks like the nearest storm clouds are miles and miles away. Just call her, he thinks begrudgingly, call her and get it over with, before he changes his mind. He knows Mark probably feels his conflict too, so he looks out at the distant sky to distract himself. 

He grimaces. The stars are all dim and covered with clouds and stupid and not helpful at all.

———

After several very long, pained minutes of Damien trying to clear his mind with various mental number puzzles, (alright, one number puzzle which he may or may not have been stuck on for a few days, much to his dismay,) Mark emerges, absolutely fucking fuming. Damien stares, horrified, while he somehow manages to yell at him in a voice that's barely above a whisper but cuts just as harshly as screaming would. He's intentionally keeping his voice down, probably trying to be at least a little conscientious of the other motel guests, but the bitter, hot harshness of the tone replaces what he lacks in volume with absolute ease.

"And another thing!" snaps Mark, continuing whatever furious-but-completely-valid rant he was on while Damien was busy freaking out about how angry he sounded. "Why would you even lie about Sam being imaginary? I mean, honestly, why?"

"Six billion, two hundred and ten million, and one thousand," he replies suddenly.

"Damien, what the actual fuck is that supposed mean?"

"A ten-digit number where the first digit lists how many zeros are in the number, the second lists how many ones there are, and so on. It's six-two-one-zero-zero-zero-one-zero-zero-zero. Six billion, two hundred and ten million, and one thousand. I, uh, may have panicked a little there, sorry buddy," he says, keeping his voice as steady as possible. So, not very. Real fucking shaky, actually.

"I don't care, Damien, just answer my question. Please," he adds desperately.

"I wasn't... I wasn't completely lying. Hell, I never met her. For all I knew, she was some sort of secret operative of the AM or god knows what. I had no reason to trust her, and honestly I still don't. By the time I found out how – how close you two had been, I – what the fuck did you want me to do, Mark? Tell you I was lying? I just fucking did. How's that for a confession? Gonna stop yelling at me yet?"

He steps closer, prompting Damien to take a step back and stumble over his own feet in the process. "No, Damien, I'm not. You know why? It's because you want me to keep yelling. And I don't want to do that, I really don't, but I don't exactly have a say in the matter, do I? I can feel it clawing at my thoughts. It's toxic, you're toxic, and – god, why do you want me to yell at you so badly? Why do you want me to be mad? Do you understand how fucked up that is?"

"I don't know, maybe because I deserve it? I mean, really, why aren't you angrier?" he says, with a perfectly casual tone of voice cast over his words. For a long moment, Mark looks like he's wondering the very same thing.

"I've spent years being mad at people," he says, his voice softer now, and Damien suddenly realizes it's probably because he's calmed down too. "Mad at the AM for what they did to me. Mad at Joanie for lying. Mad at myself for letting them. Really, truly furious at myself for – for every awful thing that I did while I was there. I don't want to be angry anymore. Not at you. Not at anyone."

They're both quiet for a long time. Cool winds have begun pouring in, and the smell of desert wildflowers and wet soil with them. He takes long, deep breaths of the chilled air, and looks at Mark, really looks at him, and he still has that just-stabbed look on his face, but it's fainter now, masked with a certain gentleness and a great deal of distressed confusion. 

Damien wants to say... something. Wants say he didn't do anything wrong, wants to say he did absolutely everything wrong, wants to blame himself for it all and claim total innocence simultaneously, and he knows Mark can feel it all because he sees that broken sort of look on his face that's halfway between conflicted frustration and longing for anything to break the silence.

But he can't find the right words to express any of this, so he simply sits back down against the rusted metal wall, still watching Mark. He wants Mark to sit down too, so he does, and they stay there in the welcomingly suffocating silence until Damien can piece together the right words to form everything he wants to say in the most succinct way possible. 

Mark finally speaks up before Damien has the chance to. 

"All zeros is the dumbest fucking passcode ever, by the way."

He laughs despite himself, and suddenly the air in his lungs feels a million times less like lead. "Hey, you're the idiot who couldn't even guess it in the first place. Obviously it did a pretty good job."

"You know those things have an emergency call feature, right? If I had gotten my hands on in when you went out to buy food or something, I wouldn't have needed the code to call her. Her number's still the same, I've had it memorized."

"Well, fuck. But what's your point in complaining about the code, then?"

Mark smiles, and it's a little pained and very, very tired, but a smile nonetheless. "You gonna take the phone back, then? Or am I gonna have to peruse it for more dramatic secrets you're keeping? Am I gonna find out you're some armed robber on the FBI's most wanted list? Are you a disgraced television chef running from your old life? Are you going by an edgy fake name?"

When Damien winces at this, Mark nearly chokes on his own tongue.

"No. No, you're fucking with me. No way in hell."

Damien is suddenly very interested in a very nice pebble on the ground beside his shoe, and is definitely not trying to hide the embarrassed flush on his cheeks by staring at said pebble for an extended period of time. "Robert's a stupid fucking name anyways," he half-whispers, half-grumbles, mostly just hoping that Mark didn't hear a single word of this confession.

Mark's laughing now, with no respect to volume, and it's contagious, and then they're both shaking with laughter in the dead of night, on the ground outside their motel room, lit a bit by the cloud-covered moon's light and just a bit more by the warm neon glow of the vacancy sign hanging beside the building.

Damien's still grinning stupidly when he says, "C'mon, let's get inside before one of us gets stung by a scorpion or mauled by a pack of coyotes or taken hostage by a secret government agency called the AM or something dumb like that."

Mark rolls his eyes. "Even if ratting us out is something that she would do, which it is absolutely not, I didn't even tell my sister where we were exactly, just the general region of the country that we're in. She's still not convinced that you weren't just using your power to force me to lie, though, which is a problem for another day. But Damien –" He sighs and places his hand gently on Damien's shoulder. "We still have a lot to talk about. You're not off the hook that easily. And I really do think it's time to head back home. I... I can't leave if you don't want me to, but just think about it, alright? Consider it, at the very least."

He surprises himself when doesn't immediately make Mark move his hand away. "I want you to be safe," he replies simply. "Home isn't safe. So we can't."

"Even if that was true, I'm safe with you, aren't I? You're a manipulative liar, sure, but you're remarkably good at keeping me safe. So I'll still be safe if we head back together." 

Damien pauses at this. "We'll talk in the morning."

"But you'll think about it, right?"

"We'll talk," he repeats, "in the morning. Goodnight, you fucking sap."

"Goodnight to you too, you conniving, shifty prick. You're lucky I'm willing to put up with your bullshit."

"And you're lucky I dragged your newly-non-comatose ass out of mad scientist government prison. We even?"

"Not in the slightest. Sweet dreams, Robert."

"Oh, fuck off, Bryant."

———


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> whoops I'm giving damien the redemption arc that nobody asked for
> 
> in canon he's completely unredeemable imho but boy he sure is fun to write in this canon-divergence au

Morning comes far too soon, and wields far, _far_ too many swords. No, fuck that, with as tired as he is, they're less like nice, clean-cutting swords and more like those - those big evil-looking jagged knifes they use to gut fish. The ones with the hooks. Whatever the hell they're called. They  _suck._ Waking up  _sucks._ The sun is an idiot and it needs to go back down, right now, immediately, before Damien drags himself out of bed and fights it unarmed. Then again, getting up to fight the sun requires actually getting up, which would mean he'd've already lost. Damn the sun.

In all fairness, the sun isn't the one flicking him in the ear and repeating increasingly vulgar variations of "get the hell up or I'll kick your ass" over and over at a crescendoed level of bitterness. Full credit for that one goes to Mark. 

"How much do you have to fucking hate yourself to torture your body with early mornings? I'd love to know." His words are slurred with sleepiness and muffled by the pillow, but he's fairly certain Mark hears him loud and clear. "Five more minutes," he adds as an afterthought.

"Being held captive and in a nightmarish time travel coma for two years really does help you appreciate being awake. You should try it sometime."

"The coma part or the waking up early part?"

 "Both," he clarifies, and immediately latches his hands around Damien's wrist and physically drags him as far off the bed as he can manage. Granted, it isn't far, Mark's still pretty weak because of the whole "muscular atrophy" thing, but Damien's admittedly not much better off, so it's far enough. He's forced to catch himself with his free arm so he doesn't fall off the bed entirely, and at this point he has precisely zero excuses for avoiding getting up.

"You - you bitch!" he stumbles. "I was sleeping!"

"Yeah, no, honey, you weren't. You can't avoid this conversation forever. And apparently you don't  _want_ to avoid it, seeing as your wonderful super-villain powers didn't kick in and shut me up three minutes ago. So, unless you plan on-"

Damien makes him shut up.

Mark glares daggers, and after an excessively long moment, Damien sighs and lets him speak again.

"How in god's name can you call  _me_ a bitch? Fuck off, we're having this conversation."

"Alright, alright, fine, I'm up, let's talk." He moves himself to a sitting position, but keeps the sheets wrapped around his shoulders. He's quiet for a bit, hoping Mark will be the first to say something, but after a beat he realizes it's probably his place to speak. "You, uh - you want to go back, and I get it, but-"

"I want a camera."

That was... not what he was expecting. Not even close. "A camera," he states, and it's really more of a question than anything.

"Yeah, Damien, a camera. You know, those clicky boxes with mechanical eyes that let you take pretty pictures? I'd say it in a different language, but I'm fairly certain it's still pronounced the same in most of them."

"Dial back the sarcasm a bit, sunshine, you know damn well why I'm confused."

"Heading back home isn't something I can do until you make that decision on your own. Your abilities ensure that I have no say in the matter. But, a camera - I've asked for one before, and either you didn't listen or you didn't care, but now I'm asking again. You've got to understand that photography is a fundamental part of me, and it's killing me to not have something to take pictures with." He sighs deeply, and the butterknife-look goes right back into his eyes, and it's killing Damien slowly. "Don't you have anything in your life like that? Anything at all?"

He ponders this. He - uh, he has - well, nothing really. He has his mental manipulation powers, and he has a stolen car, and he has Mark. Mark, who definitely told him at some point how badly he wanted a camera, which he hadn't fucking listened to. Mark, who just wanted to go home and see his sister and maybe take some photos along the way. Mark, who was sitting semi-patiently across from him, looking for any sort of answer. And suddenly, he understands, he has one.

"Mark, I just gave you a camera. My - my phone. It's got, like, a camera on it, obviously. And you definitely never handed it back to me, so, like, for now at least, you have a camera."

Mark just blinks, trying to process this. "I mean, it's my own fault for not having realized that it was a camera phone, but, like, that's also bullshit. I mean, awesome, but phone cameras suck."

Damien pauses in shock and grins wildly. "Oh my god, you poor man! You poor, poor coma man, victim to the whims of an exponential technological advancement curve. That shit doubles every year! Two to the n'th power, every year since ever."

"Uh, english, please?"

"Phones aren't that lame-ass 2013 shit anymore, babe. We got those sweet, sweet megapixels now. Seriously, you've got my phone somewhere over there, check that shit out. Amazing." 

Mark hesitantly grabs the phone from the drawer on his bedside table and taps around on the screen until he finds the camera app. He stares at it for a bit, and spins the lens around the room haphazardly and almost playfully, seeing what he can capture on the broad screen. He looks entranced by the thing, and Damien is entranced just watching him. It doesn't take long for him to hold the phone like it's fragile and priceless and the most wonderful thing he's ever seen, or at the very least, the most wonderful thing he's seen in at least a couple years. Mark wears a bright, soft smile, and soon enough, Damien has a smile to match.

And then he realizes, with a deep pain in his gut, that he really does care about this man. The sting is half from guilt and half from fear. The guilt part is obvious, and the most immediate pain. Even good intentions aren't an excuse for the things he's done, and he knows it, and he keeps doing them anyways. The usual. But the fear, that's different. That's a guttural, wrenching worry that Mark means something to him, so Mark could hurt him. People Damien couldn't give two shits about are easy to deal with. He assumes the worst, treats them as something disposable, and moves on. They can't ever disappoint him or distract him or betray his trust. The manipulation makes this easy as can be. Caring, though, caring sucks. Caring means trusting someone who could hurt you without ever once going against your will. Most people aren't good people, Damien knows this, he's living proof. And if he starts to care too much... Mark could lie and cheat and kill and Damien would let him. Attachment is toxic. He can't... he can't let himself go too far, get too lost.

But looking back at Mark, now wandering back and forth through the room taking pictures of tears in the wallpaper and paper scraps from his pockets, he thinks, just for a moment, that he wouldn't mind getting a little lost.

"Alright."

"Alright what?" Mark asks, twisting the phone towards Damien.

"You -  _we_ \- can go back."

"Go... back."

He hesitates, only for a moment. "Home."

Mark looks stunned, but not confused. His hands move to his sides, the phone with them. He says nothing for a long time. There's no joyous shouts or rambling praise, but his face goes a bit gentler

"But if you ever fucking point that camera at me again, I'm covering the lens in permanent marker and you're _not_ getting a new one."

They smile at each other, and he hates to admit it, but it's a sickly sweet moment.

"I'm absolutely gonna point this camera at you again, and you're definitely not gonna stop me. Admit it," Mark teases absently, spinning the phone around in his hands, almost like a taunt.

"Over my dead body," he says, but his actions betray his words. He doesn't stop Mark from taking the pictures. He likes the way Mark's eyes light up too much to make it go away. He does, however, keep himself turned away from the camera whenever possible, only sneaking glances when he's sure Mark's not looking back.

And when they're back on the road, headed in a new direction, he keeps his eyes focused on the road, and though he can't prevent himself from dragging stories and conversations out of Mark, he tries his hardest to listen to them less like a bored theatergoer and more like a friend entrusted to meaningful information.

He learns that Mark used to love polaroids. He'll have to keep that in mind.

\---


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> aight the update glitched out a bit there but we good we good  
> anyways i'm procrastinating my english essay as we speak so here y'all go

iii.  
"And a name for the room, sir?" asks the desperately bored bellboy, or receptionist, or whatever his stupid, menial job title is at this new, equally garbage motel.

Damien's too busy not fucking caring to just make the guy hand over the room key. He lets Mark deal with it instead. Gives him something to do for once, stops him from complaining about abuse of power and nonsense like that. As if the cash he gave to Mark to pay with wasn't stolen with that very same power.

To be fair, the asswipe he snagged it from would've spent it on cigarettes, anyways. He's a real life-saver. What a fucking hero.

"Uh, Dorian Gray," says Mark, snapping him back to reality.

The bell-whatever rolls his eyes. "Sure, whatever, dude, just take your room key. Checkout's at eleven in the morning."

Mark nods, and they go to their room.

Damien chuckles as Mark sets the key down on the base of a table lamp. "Nice pseudonym, you fucking nerd. Famous classical novel characters aren't suspicious at all."

"I panicked. Didn't have one in mind."

"If you're Dorian, does that make me Basil or Lord Henry? You better say Basil, he's much cooler."

Mark laughs. "That makes you Sibyl."

"Which one was that?"

"The woman who falls in love with me, and then kills herself."

"Ouch. Hurtful and inaccurate. I demand a rebranding."

"Fine. You're the personification of hedonism and narcissism that corrupts me."

"Still hurtful, but accurate enough that I won't complain too much." He sits down on the edge of his bed and turns to Mark. "Am I really that much of a bad influence on you?" he jokes, tilting his head.

"Absolutely."

"And really, you're Dorian in this metaphor? I never viewed you as the tragic hero type."

"The fact that you consider Dorian Grey to be a tragic hero instead of a pure, honest-to- god villain sure explains a lot about your moral compass."

"Eh, to-may-to, to-mah-to. He was pretty neutral in my mind." 

"He killed people, Damien. Are you kidding me?"

"So did Frankenstein's monster. He was pretty chill, right?"

"If honestly you consider that to be the pinnacle of moral purity, I'm terrified as to what you think an evil character might be."

"Nah, the pinnacle of moral purity is still you, sunshine. Though all this time spent near me can't exactly be good for your reputation. And as for evil... hmm. The dad from Huck Finn. That dude sucked. And technically, not a murderer!"

"If this is all you trying to subtly tell me you've killed someone–"

"No, no, don't worry, the worst I've done is make threats. I'm not even sure if my power would work to such a severe extent."

"That's still a very, very bad thing, Damien."

"Why?"

Mark freezes. "Are... are you kidding? Please tell me you're kidding."

He's deeply confused at the pained nature of Mark's reaction. "Uh, no, not really. Like, no killing, no harm done, right? I get what I want without needing to hurt anyone. I barely even need to use my ability, not that I can really help it."

Mark shakes his head in what Damien can only describe as extreme disappointment. "I really, truly don't know how to explain to you that you should care about people other than yourself."

He's offended by the accusation. "I do care about other people. If I was physically capable of putting other's wants above my own, I can assure you I'd do it."

"I wish I believed you." He sighs, long and tired, and his voice drops to barely above a whisper. "I really do wish that you weren't like this. I wish that you at least tried to be better."

And upon hearing this, some tiny, frail part of Damien just shatters. He's never needed to... to defend his "methods" before. He's certainly never considered that there was another option. Because there wasn't one. Was there? Was there some moral high road that he just hasn't seen? If he could just understand what Mark, pure Mark, kind and caring Mark would do given his same situation – if Mark's damned mimic ability were working, if this wasn't all for nothing. A trillion vicious "ifs", no help at all.

"I could. I could try. But there's – there's no point, there's no better way to be."

Mark crosses his legs and his eyes shut gently as he taps his fingertips across his leg like it's a fragile old piano. "Be kind, Damien. Don't threaten people, don't hurt them, don't go near them if you can't control your own cruelty. Hell, if you can't do that, just go full vigilante, hurt bad people instead. I'm sure even you can manage that." His voice gets sleepier and more slurred as he continues to talk. "Be the fuckin'... Robin Hood of assassinating mob bosses. Overthrow a corrupt government regime. Force people to save kittens from trees, I don't fucking know. Just... there are better things to do with your powers than harassing strangers for your own selfish means. You broke me out of a government prison-lab thing no problem, just do that a bunch but with other people. That's what I'd start off doing if I were you. Government prison-lab sucked. Why am I rambling? Are you making me ramble?" His voice trails off and he leans back into his pillows. "You're definitely making me ramble. I can feel it."

"Not intentionally."

They're both quiet for a long time. After a few minutes of silence, Damien wonders if Mark's fallen asleep. They drove for longer than usual today, mile after mile with no regard for anything but gasoline and a snack break or two. It must be late. And after the nightmare-driven sleeplessness the poor thing's been going through - which Damien is fairly certain he's not supposed to know about, though it's tricky to not know when they're cohabiting so closely - Mark is probably exhausted.

"Thank you," Damien whispers into the still room. 

"For what?" Mark mumbles back.

His mind panics just a little, and he's left reeling, having not anticipated a response. "You are... you are the first person who's even considered the possibility that I have anything at all going through my mind other than ill intent."

"Never said that," he says, but Damien swears he hears a hint of humour in his voice. "In fact, I specifically remember saying I didn't believe in you. At all. In the slightest."

"You said you didn't believe that I was already trying, not that you didn't believe I was capable of changing. So, thank you."

"I've decided I'm not being inspirational anymore until you save at least one kitten from a tree."

The air is hesitantly warm, and the lights are tinted slightly green, and they laugh together, laying casually in a shitty motel room they could've afforded a thousand times better than without so much as a flick of the wrist. "Thank god," says Damien, "I though I was gonna have to listen to your whiny preaching for another hour."

"Wouldn't have to worry 'bout that anyways. I'm probably gonna be out cold in T-minus twelve seconds."

"Sorry, bud, I still got way too much energy. I'm gonna go on a walk or something. Try not to get serial-murdered while I'm out."

Mark huffs in laughter and tilts his head further into the mound of pillows he's stolen from Damien. "No promises."

\---

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> comments and kudos are my fave thing in the world, thanks a million for reading!!


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yoooo I'm still really enjoying writing this so that's fun. uhh mild warning for non-graphic injury but no violence don't worry about it i'm just getting some payback on damien's unending bitchiness. it's plot development time dudes WOO gotta make him EARN that retribution arc

iv.

Things are still and silent for a long time.

He wanders in the dark streets which he knows damn well aren't safe, no matter how manipulative he's capable of being. Molding someone to his will like they're soft, pliable clay wouldn't stop a bullet he could never have seen coming. He would rather not get shot tonight. This is certain. He keeps walking anyways.

He needs the walk to clear his mind.

See, the conflict is normal. Damien's used to being conflicted. But the guilt... the guilt. The directionless, meaningless, worthless guilt. It's wringing the life out of him. He feels like he's been poisoned, and god, does he need someone to blame. But he can't blame Mark, perfect Mark, kind Mark. And blaming himself just catalyzes the toxin. He pins the guilt on the universe instead. He blames entropy.

He steps in a pattern of threes. This does not change his gait in the slightest. It is a meaningless measurement. But it is a prime number, the first nontrivial of them, if he remembers correctly. Two is trivial, to him and to math, the only even prime. Two does not allow for patterns or regularities in the primes. Two is entropic. So he counts his steps in threes.

He loses time, once in a rare while. Not much, only a fraction of a second here and there, but he can feel himself losing it when he jumps too quickly from a two to a three every couple hundred steps.

He wanders in circles in the streets around the motel, never going far. There are no cars.

_There are no cars._

There are no cars, until there is one.

He does not focus fast enough to get out of the way. There's... there's a set of lights. A noise. The lights vanish. A few more noises. Some red. He wonders for a brief moment if he is the red. His arm hurts, and he is dizzy. Yes, he is probably the red. He can see it streaking over and over like thinned tar from his elbow to his fingertips. Something drips into his eyes. It is red, too.

He is _very_ dizzy. He wants to lay down, which would be much easier a task if he wasn't already face down in the pavement. It smells like metal and smoke. He wants, very badly, to rest.

There is a fog of vertigo that drifts over his vision. There is a stillness in the air. And then, for just a moment, there is nothing.

\---

Damien opens his eyes and  _immediately_ fucking regrets it. He wants to scream at the splitting pain across his skull, twisting violently along his orbitals like a hot knife. He hisses, pulling his hands up to his face in a desperate attempt to dispel it, but he is met with a fierce refusal by his left elbow, which sends a jolt like fire throughout his whole arm. He gasps, a hell of a lot closer to screaming this time.

He takes a series of deep breaths to calm himself down. He hears a relieved sigh in response. Mark.

"Oh, thank god. Oh, fuck." He shifts Damien's hair from his forehead to behind his ear. It smells like fresh blood, Damien notices. "You're awake, thank god. Hey, it's okay, it's okay, it's gonna be okay."

"Yeah, hey, buddy. Hi. Uh, where are we? I'd really rather not open my eyes right now," he explains, and his voice isn't nearly as rough as he had expected it to be.

"I, uh. A couple miles down the road. Just, like, two or something, not far, I just had to make sure that no one saw, saw you, saw the blood. I should've probably gone a little farther, but I was worried. The car, we're in the car. Not driving, I pulled onto the shoulder thing. Sorry, I know I shouldn't have moved you, I just..."

"Sunshine, as much as I hate to question your judgement, I distinctly remember just being hit by some rando' in a douchey car," Damien says, taking a moment to breathe more clearly, "which, just saying, would probably warrant a hospital visit. Especially given what I can only assume is a head injury, as well as whatever the fuck happened to my arm."

"We... you, me, the others, our biology is different than normal people's. Each of us is different. At the AM, they kept running these experiments, these awful experiments, where they - I don't want to think about it, I really don't, you just have to trust me on this. Any medicine the hospital could give you would risk hurting you even more. I couldn't let them try to treat you. I... I'm, like, the farthest thing from a doctor, but I picked up some skills over the past couple of years. Again, don't wanna talk about it. I can... I'll get some supplies, bandage your arm, make sure the bleeding stops and it doesn't get infected. Splint it, maybe. I don't know how to check if it's broken, I'll have to look it up. God, I was so scared, Damien, please don't ever scare me like that again. I was so scared."

Damien huffs in both amusement and pain and finally attempts to look around himself. It's still pitch dark. He clearly wasn't out for long. He's laying on his side in the back seat of their car, with Mark sitting backwards between the two front seats, facing towards him, with his hand resting gently beside Damien's face. His palms are dusted with scarlet and his eyes are stained with panic and tears.  _Tears._ Mark had been crying.

"I was knocked unconscious. Aren't you concerned about possible brain injury?

Mark responds with nothing but silence. And then abruptly, he looks deeply, _deeply_ worried. Damien is confused.

"Answer me, Mark.  _Now._ "

And Mark still does not answer.

And this presents a bit of a predicament. Because when Damien wants Mark to answer, Mark  _always_ answers. Zero exceptions. And Damien desperately wants Mark to answer him.

He shoots straight up, pressing himself as far into the corner of the back seat as he can manage, ignoring the crushing pain behind his eyes and the dizziness that threatens to overwhelm him. Fighting them back. They are not important, not now.

"Oh my god," Mark says simply.

"Get away from me," Damien hisses, bracing his good arm against the car door. Mark doesn't move. Damien doesn't either. "I want you to get away from me. _You_ want to get away from me. This.. this isn't possible. Why are you not leaving? Mark, what's happening?" His breath has become shaky and uneven, and he winces on every inhale as a new bolt of pain hits his left elbow from being moved too quickly. "I'm scared. Mark, I'm scared. Please tell me what's going on."

And when he looks back at Mark's eyes, he does not see shock. He sees horrified, panicked  _wonder._

"See, this - _this_ is what I was worried about. Among other things."

\---

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> as always, thanks for reading!! comments and kudos are my faves, thank you all so much <3


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> woo another chapter!!! i'd meant for this to be longer but it ended up pretty long as is. as always, thanks for reading! and a mild warning for blood and injury mentions.

v.

And, overwhelmingly so, Damien feels chilled down to his skeleton. It's not fair.  _It's not fair._ He's fucking trying, he's finally been fucking trying, and now the universe has ripped his own core away from him violently and without warning and without bravado and it's not  _fucking_ fair.

This... this _thing_ that he's been bound to for his whole life. No, not bound to, a part of. This wretched thing that just kept taking and taking for years, forcing away his parents and the few friends he ever managed to make, poisoning everything he touched, keeping the world at an arm's length. This fantastic thing which he had finally found hope of controlling, of using for good, of wandering the world with. And now it's gone, it's gone, it's _gone,_ and he should be joyous and he should be miserable but he is neither. 

He's just... cold. 

He can tell that his whole body is still shaking as he cowers in his spot in the back seat of the car for the umpteenth straight minute. His hands and ankles are the worst of it, and no matter how much effort he put into stilling them and calming his breathing, he only manages to tire his muscles out from the conflict of signals. His head and arm are still ringing with screaming pain but they're not important, nothing is important, and _god_ he just wants this all to stop. 

The shallows of his eyes feel icy and damp, which is stupid because he's  _not_ crying. There must be some... some rain or something. In the car. Or something fell into his eyes. Whatever. Still more likely than tears, because Damien does not cry, ever. Definitely not in front of other people.  _Definitely_ not in front of Mark. And certainly not because he's scared.

"While I was... a part of several experiments -- see, sometimes other atypicals got... hurt. Hit in the head. And these scientists, they would make me see if I could still mimic their abilities. I didn't want to, they were hurt, I wanted to help, I just..." Mark trails off and sighs. "I wondered why, for a while. That was when I first found out -- that these sorts of injuries could _halt_  abilities. Sometimes permanently, sometimes not," he explains slowly, as if he's being extremely delicate with his phrasing. He's clearly omitting large swathes of information, but Damien doesn't care, he doesn't, and he definitely isn't crying. "I'm sorry, you don't give a fuck how I know, do you? I'm sure you've got other issues on your mind right now. I'm so sorry, Damien."

Damien glowers but refuses to look him in the eye. He's dead silent, and he plans on staying that way.

"I need to call my sister," he states clearly as he pulls Damien's phone from a cupholder.

"Don't tell her. Don't you dare fucking tell her, you cruel son of a bitch," he spits out, and his voice is spiked and harsh with visceral panic and anger, which quickly shifts to fear as he fights once again to steady his shaking hands and sit up straight. "I'm sorry. Please, Mark, please do not."

Mark scoffs, suddenly bitter. “That’s not me asking for permission, that's me warning you. And last I checked, you can’t fucking stop me anymore.”

Damien lashes his arm forward in an attempt to grab the phone with wide, terrified eyes, but the lurching pain feels like it’s ripping his elbow apart from the seams, and he drops it back down to his side, covering the slashes on his skin with his free hand. A sharp crimson mars his palm, and for a brief fraction of a second he thinks it's ink or paint or anything else. The fresh blood is far brighter than the mess of it that had dried across the rest of his arm. His hand tremors as he pulls it away from the wound. He glances up at Mark, knowing that some twisted hint of guilt shows in his eyes as he does.

“Stop moving it, idiot,” Mark grumbles, but the harshness is quickly flickering away from his voice. He quickly grabs some sort of torn fabric and laughs a bit as Damien continues to fight against his own pain to move his arm. He twists to the back of the car and sits beside him.

(He's definitely not still moving his arm out of spite. Totally not. That would be stupid.)

Mark holds his arm still, and twists the fabric carefully and precisely around his bleeding elbow along to his wrist as a makeshift bandage. The part just above the main injury soaks almost immediately through with a crisp red, but it doesn't worsen much after that, and the rest seems to be doing its job quite nicely. 

"Do I want to know how you're so good at tending to wounds?" Damien mumbles, and he's surprised by the lightness of his own voice.

"Doesn't matter if you do or not. I'm not telling you," Mark responds. He seems a bit distant as he says this, but there's an odd sort of playfulness to his voice. No, not playfulness. He almost sounds like he's - like he's challenging him.

"Alright, fair. Do I want to know what this fabric is?"

"You owe me a new tee shirt. That was my only spare." And he smiles. "C'mon, we gotta get out of here before someone discovers your puddle of asphalt blood and calls the cops. And we need to get some actual bandages. And that antibiotic shit so you don't keel over from an infection any time soon."

There's a moment of emptiness in the air as he gets back into the driver seat and nods for Damien to move up to the passenger seat. 

"And some food," Mark adds. "We're gonna eat some real food. Ramen be damned."

\---

An hour-and-a-half drive later, they arrive at a twenty-four hour gas station out in the desert plains. Buildings are visible in the far distance, scattered and glowing across near-dawn horizon. Mark looks miles beyond exhausted. Damien feels the same.

"I've got to call Joanie, Damien. Go in and buy some first aid stuff and whatever seems vaguely reminiscent of breakfast. And a couple tee shirts, if they have them. You have cash, right?"

He thinks about this for a second. Not the cash, he's not worried about that. His wallet still has a few thousand in it, a collection of bills stolen solely for the hell of it.

"I don't know how to do that," he settles on.

"Do what?"

"Buy things."  
  
"You... what?"

"Like, theoretically, I know how. I've seen television. Just, like, how do you pay for things? It seems complicated. Do you just hand them the money? Is that before or after you hand them the things? I think it's after, they have to scan the items, right? I'm pretty sure that's a thing. Also, I'm covered in dried blood, which probably looks very suspicious. Which is worse, if I hand them money and items in the wrong order, or being covered in blood? I need an algorithm for this sort of stuff."

"You're a very strange person, Damien, I hope you recognize that."

"Bastard."

"I think you can manage to buy a few items without getting yourself punched or arrested. This isn't a challenge. Don't prove me wrong."

"This is my worst nightmare."

"Damien, for normal humans, this is Tuesday." He takes out Damien's phone and begins to dial in a few numbers. "Now go."

"If I have a mental breakdown at the checkout, it's your fault, bastard."

"As lovely of a nickname as 'bastard' is, I definitely preferred 'sunshine'. What happened to 'sunshine'?"

"Still your fault, sunshine," he says, and he opens the car door into shadow.

\---

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you for reading!! comment and kudos fuel me haha


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> yoooo another update!!! wow this is a long one  
> warning for discussion of suicide and mild injury, nothing descriptive  
> and also damien being horribly awkward, what else is new

vi.

It takes Damien about twenty seconds to realize just how fucking  _little_ retail workers care. 

Seriously. His left side is fucking bathed in blood. It's 4:00 am or some shit. He smells like an oil fire. He's wandering around like an eight-legged alien with little to no concept of the human tradition of shopping. And this chick's just sitting at the gas station register, glaring daggers at the wall, showing no interest other than a raise of her brows as he first walks in. 

Like, at the very least, he was expecting her to call security or something. He looks like a walking crime scene. This girl apparently has no sense of self-preservation. 

Her hair is pulled back into a high ponytail, a dark blonde, but half the strands have fallen out of it and swept across her face instead. Freckles dust her face like pigeons on a building's facade. She's odd looking, not classically beautiful but not ugly, maybe in her twenties. Her dark brown eyes don't seem to match the rest of her face. He wonders for a bit if her hair is dyed, and twists nonchalantly into a different aisle so it doesn't look like he's staring. He doesn't want to terrify the girl in case she does decide to glance in his direction.

Alright, what was he getting here? Ah. Bandages. Where the fuck are bandages? He walks over to the shelves with the chapstick and little bottles of shampoo, but the nearest thing he can find are a dozen different brands of acetaminophen and sleeping pills. He looks back over at the worker, feeling anxiety heavy in the base of his throat.

"Uh. Hi," he says awkwardly, and winces immediately.

"Yeah, hi. You need something?" she responds after a stifled sigh.

"Uh. Bandages? And, like, Neosporin, if you have it." His voice cracks. He winces again.

She looks him up and down, taking in his... regalia. He must look like a fucking mess.

"Dog bite you or something?"

"Or something."

"Alright." She drags out the first syllable. "Yeah, we got 'em both, up front here next to checkout. I'll grab 'em for you and hold 'em on the counter. You look like you could use a hand, unless that's all you're buying."

He twists nervously, moving further away from the counter, stepping towards the weird clear refrigerator things in the back. "Um, no, I need some... food? Yeah, some breakfast. Two breakfasts. And coffee, that's a breakfast thing, right? Oh, cool, these fridge things have coffee. In little bottles. How, uh, how neat."

"Good to know, dude," she drawls sarcastically. He laughs.

"Do you have any... like, shirts?"  
  
"Shirts?"

"Yeah, mine's sorta -- y'know. Like." He gestures to his side. It's definitely still covered in dried blood.

"Nah. You didn't, like, kill someone, did you? We had a guy in here that had just killed someone once. Crazy dude. Wild day. Dude tried to trade the murder weapon for my coworker's shirt. Cops and us had a good laugh once it was all over."

He stares at her incredulously and smiles as he sets a couple of iced coffee bottles on the counter. "Nope, blood's all mine. No murder trades here."

"You in trouble or something? If someone's trying to hurt you, I got a guy I can call to -"

"No, no trouble." He laughs. "I got in a bit of a tussle with the sharp end of a car. Needless to say, I lost."

"Lemme guess. No health insurance?"

Damien snorts. "No health insurance."

She grins and rustles in a bag beside her for something. "You're lucky you're so cute, pal. I just can't picture you as a criminal." She tosses him a folded, brightly colored tee shirt.

"I... thank you," he mumbles, unsure of what else to say. He holds it in the crook of his right elbow as he grabs a box of a half dozen donuts from the shelf beside him and places it on the counter. "Thank you."  
  
"Let's hope yellow suits you. I always keep an extra on hand in case I spill shit on myself. And if you don't mind," she says, sliding a little slip of paper over to him, "text me in a week or something, so I know you haven't tried to fight another car in the dead 'a night and died."

He takes it into his hand and places it in his pocket. "I'll do that." 

"Alright, is that all you're gettin'?"

"Yes."

The girl swipes the stack of items against a strange red laser thing and he almost jumps as the register beeps at each swipe. "That'll be twenty-four ninety-one." She places them in a bag and pushes it towards him.

He pulls his wallet from his jeans - which he's incredibly grateful are black and therefore free of visible blood, as he's certain it'd be a lot harder convince someone to lend him some pants - and places a few hundreds in front of her.

She stares blankly at them, and he takes the bag and walks to the door.

"For the shirt," he says.

And he leaves.

\---

He walks as sneakily as he can manage with a rustling plastic bag over to the car.

(It's not eavesdropping if it's technically his phone, right?)

Mark is still on the call, and blessedly enough, he's distracted enough to not notice Damien leaning against a nearby pillar. The gas station sign glows in brilliant reds and blues as the light of dawn floods the sky, and he sits and listens as Mark speaks.

"He - he wouldn't have."

A long pause.

"Look, Joanie, I know you don't trust his mental state, but I need you to trust me when I say that he didn't do this to himself. He's self-destructive, sure, but not suicidal. I'd know if that's what it was."

He gazes emptily into the neon. Those fuckers were debating his mental health.  _His_ mental health! As if Mr. Coma Hostage didn't have enough problems of his own. As if he'd ever give up on his stubbornness to live.

"No, I understand. I know, I know. I'll keep an eye on him."

Another pause.

"Ha. Yeah, I noticed that too. It's amazing how healthy he is, considering he subsists entirely off instant noodles and oyster crackers."

There's a long stretch of silence this time. He almost leans out to check if Mark has hung up when he finally speaks again.

"I'll be sure to send plenty of pictures. Hopefully I'll see you soon. Tell Sam and the gang I said hi. Love ya, bye."

And then there's a click, and more silence. Damien leaves his hiding place and waves to grab Mark's attention. He steps out of the car.

"Ah, Damien, finally. What took you so long?"

"I was talking with the clerk."

"Ah. Judging by the lack of cops, I assume it went well?"

"She was very nice. Also, either clinically apathetic or a little crazy."

Mark grins. "I know the type."

He takes a seat on a long concrete bench along the side of the building. The walls are dark grey and just reflective enough to catch the light from the neon sign and the deep red sun as it peeks over the horizon.

Mark sits beside him and takes the bag from his hand.

"Coffee and donuts," Mark says, smiling softly. "You have no idea how long it's been since I last had this."

"Never had donuts before."

"You're kidding."

"Wish I was. I've heard great things."

"Well then, you're in for a treat. Let me get you bandaged up, though. Don't need you bleeding all over my coffee."

Damien pulls back for a moment as Mark moves to grab his arm. Mark blinks at him, and moves to try again, and Damien lets him. He hisses and digs his nails into his own palm as Mark unravels the matted cloth from the wound.

"Sorry, this is gonna sting like hell," he says, and he pours a water from an old bottle onto the remainders the tee-shirt rag along with some antibiotic. He wipes the blood off of the uninjured part Damien's arm with precision and a strange softness. When he gets to the wound, he cleans off the caked blood and gravel dust and when Damien digs his nails into Mark's wrist instead, he lets him.

The slash looks bad. Really bad. Horror movie bad. The blood had hidden a mess of torn skin and muscle, flayed crudely by the impact with the asphalt. But it's relatively superficial, no major veins seem to be damaged, and aside from some nasty bruising, the bone seems to be in fine shape. Maybe a slight fracture, but there's little he can do about that. He's still horrified, of course, but it gives him something to think about other than the hand pressing a cold cloth into his frayed skin. He counts each tiny scratch on his arm. He stops at twenty.

The bandage Mark twists around his arm comes as a welcome relief, a constant warm pain rather than a biting, bitter one. Mark handles Damien like he's fragile and important. He's insulted, and at the same time, rather grateful.

"You'd make a good doctor," he tells Mark, dazed from pain and a lack of sleep, and pulls his coffee up to his lips.

Mark opens his mouth to respond but says nothing, instead taking the phone from his pocket and pointing it towards Damien.

Damien understands that he's taking a picture. He isn't happy about it, but with the glow in Mark's eyes, he can't help but sit idly by and let him.

He swaps his shirt out for the new one. They eat breakfast together as the sun rises. 

Damien learns that he likes sweet foods and hates cold coffee, and that Mark thinks he should wear yellow more often.

The tug of exhaustion on his body has hit its tipping point, and he almost passes out on Mark's shoulder, eventually falling asleep in the passenger's seat on the short drive to the nearest hotel, as Mark hums the tunes to shitty mid-2000s pop songs.

\---

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you so much for reading. your kudos and comments inspire me to keep writing!! <3


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> woo a nice long chapter!! again, warning for canonical poor mental health and mild injury, it's just a little more pronounced at the beginning of this one. thanks for reading!

vii.

He's amazed by how little time it takes for him to break down.

Especially after being so...  _okay._ A little shaken up, definitely in pain, but ultimately and genuinely a-okay for several hours after the accident. He talked, he joked, hell, he ate a  _meal._ He  _never_ eats proper meals.  _He was fine._ He and Mark didn't get to a motel until well after sunrise, but poor sleeping schedule aside, they even got some real sleep for once.

But now he's standing in the bathroom just minutes after waking up, with a jagged chunk of glass clutched in his white-knuckled hand, not entirely certain why he's holding it. 

Well, that's not accurate, he knows why he's holding it. He just picked it up. What he's not as sure about is why he broke it in the first place.

"What the fuck was that noise?" calls Mark groggily from the room over. "Damien? Everything okay?"

He sets the glass on the counter of the sink, cautious to not cut up his palm on the edges, and observes its shape. Glass always breaks in such a seemingly random way. He wonders if it follow any specific structural patterns. He sits down on the floor in the corner opposite the mess of large, glittering shards. They look a bit like crystals of ice, but their form is too chaotic, too harsh, too uncaring to be truly comparable.

He hears Mark's light-footed steps on the ground as he approaches the partially opened door, followed by a sigh.

"Do I really have to ask you if this was intentional or not?"

"I broke a cup," Damien clarifies, his voice distracted and detached. "Intentionally. Yes."

"Are you hurt?"

He looks at his hands. "No. Nothing new, at least. That's good."

Mark navigates gently around the smallest fragments and sits on the floor beside him. "Why?"

"Not sure. I just _really_ wanted to break some glass, I think. I'm sure you know the feeling."  
  
He pauses for a long time before responding, "I do," and rests his head on Damien's shoulder.

Damien thinks about stargazing. Specifically, he thinks about how he hasn't stargazed for several years.

He thinks that maybe one day in the future he'll go stargazing. It's not nighttime now, and he has glass to clean up, and stargazing is an ultimately useless hobby, but he's certain he'd find some sorts of answers scrawled along the sides of constellations. If only he knew the right questions.

"You smell like blood," Mark says quietly, snapping Damien out of his trailing thoughts, and shifts his head to look at him. "Ah. The cut above your brow is bleeding again."

"Oh, thank god."  
  
"How is that a good thing?"

"My face felt like there was water on it. I was worried I was crying."

There's a pause. "Uh. You're also crying."

"Damn," he says, and laughs softly. "Damn," he repeats, and covers his face with his bruised hands, and his laughter overwhelms him.

"Why are you laughing?"

"Not a clue. I feel _immensely_ shitty."

"Like, exhausted? Weak?"

"No, more like I've had my eyes ripped out of my skull against my will."

"Losing your power is nothing like losing eyesight. You're the only one who's ever had the sort of... 'privilege' that your ability gave you. Losing it just makes you face the world's difficulties in the exact same way as everybody else. That isn't even comparable to the pain that other people go through with loss on a daily basis, let alone whatever pain you caused others in the past."

"Fine, then, fucker, I feel like I just had my wings ripped off, violently and bloodily."

Mark huffs in amusement. "You just need time to get used to it. You're very... tendentious. It'll be a sharp shock to your system to try to go through the world without manipulating it, but -"

"It's not that. I mean, that'll suck. That does suck. Horribly. But that's not it, not really."

"Then what is it?"

"I feel like... I feel like a part of me just isn't here. Like it's missing. I don't feel whole. I don't feel like I'm fully here."

"You aren't the only one who's ever felt this way."

Damien rolls his eyes, but Mark's head is still on his shoulder, so he's sure he doesn't see. "Yeah, I'm not fucking special,  _I get it._ I get the point."

"No, no, I mean - you aren't alone. You don't have to go through any of this alone."  
  
He scoffs. "And what, _you're_ supposed to help me through this? You're lecturing _me_ about not opening up or getting help? I know you still have nightmares, Mark. I know you have nightmares and flashbacks and panic attacks, and I know you're bottling it up and not doing shit about it. You're not exactly the poster child for good coping mechanisms."

Mark sighs. "That was uncalled for, and you know it."  
  
"Tragic. Next time you want to scold me for not accepting help from others, you should consider - I don't know - accepting help from others?"

He listens to Mark's equable breathing for a minute or two. Or maybe it's just a few seconds, or maybe it's an hour. His timekeeping keeps getting tangled up with other numbers. "Sorry. I should clean up the glass, shouldn't I? See, it's gonna be moments like these that I miss my ability most of all," he says, only half-joking. He doesn't get up.

"You're right," Mark says.

"Am I now?"

"You didn't have to phrase that brief monologue so bitchily, but yes, you are. I needed to hear that."

"You gonna get a therapist?"

"Yeah, pretty sure the only therapist who I could legally even tell about any of this is my sister, which ain't happening. No therapist for me."

"You gonna get some friends?"

Mark laughs, tilting his head against the crook of Damien's neck. "Yeah, I'm gonna get some friends."

"You got... what, one? You got Time Travel Chick. Sam."

"I got two."  
  
"What, Sam and your sister?"

He shakes his head and gives an exasperated smile. "My sister is not included on my list of friends. My life isn't  _that_ sad. Not yet, at least."  
  
"What poor sap is second on the list, then?"

"Some grumbly narcissist with stupid wavy emo hair and a penchant for lying. I think his name's Zamien. Or was it Yamien? Something like that."

Damien snorts and grins. "He sounds awful."

"The worst," he replies through a smile.

\---

They decide to drive through the rest of the day's light in a desperate attempt to repair their mangled sleep schedules. The sun sinks low in the sky, a calm reminder of their late start and the cool winds that poured through the window that Mark made Damien leave open.  _Fresh air,_ he insisted.  _Appreciate the weather._ What bullshit.

The road is a monotony of concrete and dirt. Not even squirrels or ravens bother wandering along the sparsely populated hills and scattered towns. The speed has slowed down along this stretch, dragging out their travel time. In a few hours, he knows the area will become far more urbanized and developed as they approach nearer and nearer to their destination, but he's sick of waiting. Waiting sucks. And there's nothing to look at. Except -

"Pull over," he tells Mark firmly.

"What? Why? What's wrong?"

"Pull. Over."

"I'm not gonna just pull over unless you give me a valid god damn reason why I should -"

"Pull the fuck over or I'm tuck-and-rolling out of the damn car."

"Alright! Fine, fine. Pulling over," he grumbles, and turns the car onto the shoulder.

Damien practically leaps from the vehicle the second it comes to a full stop. He crosses the street and walks back a short distance in the direction they came from.

"Gonna tell me what the fuck is going on?" Mark calls across to him.

Damien shushes him.

"Damien, c'mon, this is ridiculous," he says, but he does thankfully quiet down.

A stray dog tilts its head curiously at Damien as he crouches down in front of it. It looks a bit scuffed up, worryingly thin, and a tad frightened, but nothing unmanageable.

There's a drawn-out and very audible sigh from Mark. "Oh, fuck no. We are _not_ taking in a stray."

Damien winces as the pup takes a step back from the noise. He shushes him again and quietly mumbles, "Hypocrite." Taking a small and hesitant step back towards the dog, he reaches out a calm hand and waits silently for it to move closer to him. It sniffs curiously at his hand. "Hey, buddy. Hi, yes, hello, aren't you a sweetheart?"

"Are you  _kidding_ me?" shouts Mark, but the dog pays him no attention, instead sitting happily as Damien scratches behind its pointed ears. "What is that, a german shepherd?"

"No, you're some sort of mutt, aren't you, honey?" Damien gushes, dragging his nails through its matted grey-brown coat. "Maybe a little belgian malinois? A bit of retriever? You're beautiful, is what you are."

Mark crosses over to them and places his hands over his temples. "Aww, he is kinda cute, isn't he?"

" _She_ is adorable," he corrects. "And we are absolutely not leaving her out here to starve. Over my dead body."

" _No,_ Damien, no way. What're you gonna do? Where are you gonna keep it? How will you feed it?"

"We're on the last stretch of road, it's late, and we'll get back home tomorrow. I'll only keep her in the car for the day. We can get her some canned food at a grocery store or a gas station or something."

"Do you know how hard it is to find a pet friendly hotel? And what if it has, like, rabies or something?"

"She doesn't have rabies, loser," he fusses, patting the dog's head and combing burrs off of her legs with his fingertips.

"Didn't know you were such a sap for animals."

"Not 'animals', dogs. And I'm not a sap, don't call me a sap. They were just always - oh, never mind."

"No, finish your thought," Mark insists.

"Dogs were never influenced by my manipulations. I never had to worry about hurting them or sicking them on someone, whether I meant to or not. After, y'know, my parents took off, I didn't really bother with... like, family figures. Or people, really, except when I wanted things out of them. I was an exceptionally shitty kid, honestly, just the worst, but I did one thing right, and that was take in stray dogs. Or steal them from animal abusers if the chance arose. That was always fun."

"When'd you stop? Taking in strays, I mean."

"Well, I took you in, so never, I guess."

"I was not a stray!"

"You were comatose. In a secret government prison."

" _You_ weren't even the one who put me back in my body. Sam was."

"I gave you food and shelter."

"You gave me instant noodles and skanky motels."

"Yeah, babe. Food and shelter."

"Whatever, not the point. And stop calling me 'babe'. We're not keeping the dog. Flattery will get you nowhere."

"We're keeping her. Not debatable."

"Ridiculous. You're fucking ridiculous!"

Damien covers her ears with his hands. "Don't swear in front of the fucking dog, Mark."

He shakes his head theatrically and waves his arm at him, pulling out Damien's (Mark's?) phone. "I'm calling Joanie."

"Feel free, bud. Dr. B will take my side, no matter how much she hates me. Dogs are great. Any sane person will agree."

"I'm not disagreeing, I just - shit, it's going to voicemail. I'm leaving a fucking message, though."

He sighs, and Damien beams.

\---

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> again, thank you for reading, and comments and kudos are always appreciated.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cute lil bonus chapter because why not i love writing this shit <3  
> warning for excessive fluff and that's literally it

**Main menu**  
  
**~~Press one to~~**

**You have one new message**  
  
**To listen to your messages, press one.** **~~To set a passwo~~**

**One new message from** **_number unavailable_**  
  
**Received today at 5:45pm  
**

> **[beep]**
> 
> **Mark:** -s _going to voicemail. I'm leaving a fucking message though._ [Mark sighs.]  _Hey, sis, it's me again. I'm a li-i-ittle hurt that you didn't pick up -_
> 
> [Someone scoffs in the background]
> 
> **Mark:** _\- but whatever, I'm sure you're busy. We're still on track to be back tomorrow, probably early noonish, but -_
> 
> [Barking, followed by someone's laughter]
> 
> **Mark:** _Fuck off, Damien, I can't fucking believe you right now. Joanie, when you see him, you better kick his fucking ass, because if he thinks he's gonna be able to take care of a scrawny-ass fleabag for more than twelve seconds -_
> 
> **Damien** [muffled, in the distance] **:** _Hey, Dr. B, why's your brother such a whiny puppy-hater? You should have warned me, I never would have helped you save him otherwise._
> 
> **Mark:** _I don't hate puppies, idiot, I just don't think either of us is fit to take care of a dog right now, are you kidding me?_
> 
> **Damien** [mockingly, no longer muffled] **:** _It's called t_ _eamwork, sunshine, ever heard of it?_
> 
> **Mark:** _He found a stray on the side of the road and isn't even considering my input on this. I mean really, we have no idea where it's from, if it's sick, if it's crazy, I still think it's part coyote or some shit -_
> 
> **Damien**  [once again muffled and distant]: _Stop lying, gimme the phone._ [Rustling]
> 
> **Mark:** _Shut up and go pet your dog or something._
> 
> [Loud rustling]
> 
> **Mark:** _Call me back when you get a chance._
> 
> [More rustling, another sigh.]
> 
> **Damien** [much farther away, shouting] **:** _You said "your dog"! Hey, Dr. B, he said "your dog"! That means I get to keep her!_
> 
> **Mark:**  [Amused laughter]  _So, basically, we have a dog now._
> 
> **Damien** [still shouting] **:** _She's beautiful and soft and I love her._
> 
> **Mark:** _See you soon._
> 
> **Damien:** _G'bye._
> 
> **[click]**

**End of message**

**To replay message, press one. ~~To save message, press~~**

**Message saved**

**You have no new messages**


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> extra super long chapter in celebration of the new season!! i miiight end this series soon as they're coming to the end of their road trip but honestly i doubt it, i love writing this wayyy to much and i still have a lot of ideas for situations to put these two dummies and their dog into. basically expect me to keep updating this forever and ever.  
> no warnings that i can think of. they talk about mental illness for a little but honestly when don't they.  
> (honestly tho the new episode was great and i'd bet good money on the secret about damien being that he lost his powers from being hit on the head... hmm sounds familiar lmaoooo)

ix.

This night, they end up at a real, honest-to-god hotel. Four stars and everything. It's even got potted hydrangeas and vases of asters sitting in the lobby. A small but strangely beautiful cafe sits temptingly within the building, and while Damien has spent the vast majority his life considering food to be nothing but sustenance, he has to admit that some small part of him just melts at the idea of sitting down for a meal and a cup of something warm. Shining silver signs point to an outdoor pool area lined with glowing blue and orange lights. And, best of all, they're pet friendly.

(Then again, a scruffy, collarless dog and two scraggly boys paying with cash probably wouldn't make it past reception in most cases, but a $300 definitely-not-a-bribe works wonders where Damien's loss of powers has failed him.)

It's a Hotel Indigo, words that mean nothing to Damien but seem to make Mark smile in memory of something. When Damien asks him about it, he just shakes his head happily and mumbles something about a long-ago trip to Hong Kong. 

He desperately attempts to sweet-talk Mark into giving the dog a shower. Mark just laughs.

"You still haven't named it yet," he insists, rolling his eyes as Damien pouts, and spins their semi-shared phone around in his hands distractedly.

"What do _you_ think should I name her? Oh, _wait_ , you think this is my dog, you don't get to choose," Damien grumbles, and takes his phone back from Mark, who's sitting cross-legged beside him on the sofa.

"So you won't name the dog and you won't let me name the dog. Who's gonna name the dog, Damien?"

"I know maybe five people in the entire world and we're two of them."

Mark hums. 

"Shit. Shit, wait, I know  _exactly_ who I can ask," he says excitedly, digging through his pockets.

"Who?"

He pulls out a little slip of paper with a scrawl of numbers along the edge. "Gas station girl."

"You got her fucking  _number?_ "

"I think she said something along the lines of 'call me soon to prove you haven't been stabbed to death since I last saw you', but yeah, I got her number." He types it into his contacts and sends her a message.

> _you [7:28 pm]: Hey, what should I name this cool dog I found?_

"I will forever be in awe as to how you, a social disaster, got a girl's number," Mark sighs. "In a gas station. At four in the morning. Covered in blood."

"She said she trusted me because I was cute. Terrible decision on her part, to be honest," he says, and looks back at his phone.

> _gas station girl [7:29 pm]: uhh who is this?_
> 
> _gas station girl [7:29 pm]: wait wait_ _dont tell me_
> 
> _gas station girl [7:29 pm]: ur murder boy! my most favorite murder boy from the gas station!!_
> 
> _you [7:30 pm]: Wow, that was a fast response._
> 
> _gas station girl [7:30 pm]: im at work aka already on my phone lmao_

"Hey, Mark, what does _el-em-ay-oh_ mean?" asks Damien, genuinely curious. Mark breaks down laughing.

> _you [7:31 pm]: How exactly did I earn_ _the title "murder boy"? I'm pretty sure I didn't murder anyone._
> 
> _gas station girl [7:31 pm]: u showed up in the middle of night covered in blood. im maybe 85% sure it had nothing to due with murder but lets be real the other 15% is definitely deserving of "murder boy"_
> 
> _you [7:31 pm]: That's fair. I don't think I caught your name, by the way._
> 
> _gas station girl [7:31 pm]: saengdao. just "_ _sae" to most ppl tho_

"That means moonlight or stars or something, right? Is she Thai?" Mark says, peeking over Damien's shoulder.

"No clue. Probably. And why the fuck do you know Thai?"

The dog hops onto the sofa into the small space between them. Damien ruffles the fur of her neck as Mark makes faces.

"It's a... long story," says Mark.

"I'm sure it is."

> _saengdao [7:32 pm]: alright i just realized i don't know your name either_
> 
> _saengdao [7:32 pm]: ive mostly just been referring to u as murder boy in my head_
> 
> _you [7:33 pm]: Damien_
> 
> _saengdao [7:33 pm]: alright damien, so whats this about a dog??_
> 
> _you [7:33 pm]: Me and my friend Mark took in a stray dog and we can't think of any names._
> 
> _saengdao [7:33 pm]: girl, boy, or undetermined?_
> 
> _you [7:33 pm]: The dog's a girl, but honestly, any name's fine at this point, as long as it's not "the dog"._
> 
> _saengdao [7:34 pm]: hmm_
> 
> _saengdao [7:34 pm]: knife_
> 
> _saengdao [7:34 pm]: name her knife_

"You're not naming our dog Knife," says Mark.

"Ah, so it's  _our_ dog now, huh?" laughs Damien.

> _you [7:36 pm]: Mark says no to Knife._
> 
> _saengdao [7:36 pm]: tell mark to suck it_
> 
> _saengdao [7:36 pm]: her name is Knife now, no takesies-backsies_
> 
> _you [7:37 pm]: I like the way you think._

"Dog's name is officially Knife. No arguments."

Knife barks.

"You're lame," says Mark. "You gonna give Knife a shower?"

"Only if you take her out for a bathroom break and pour her some food."

"Sounds like a good deal to me."

"You first."

Mark rolls his eyes. "Fine."

\--- 

"Knife, no! You're still soaking wet, get off the bed," Mark yelps, glowering. "Damien, control your fucking dog."

"Sorry, no can do, she's earned it. Look how fluffy her fur is, what an angel!"

Mark petulantly tries to push her off, but she's practically dead weight, and as young as she looks, he's not nearly strong enough to even budge her. "God, I need some down time. There's a pool here, right? I'm not just hallucinating that?"

"There is," he replies dismissively.

"They got a hotel shop that sells swimsuits and shit, can I snag a couple bucks from you?"

"Feel free."

He takes Damien's wallet and heads out the door. "See you in a few."

It doesn't take long for him to get bored. He hadn't realized until this point how much of his entertainment is dependent upon Mark's presence. He considers texting Saengdao again, but he can't think of anything to say that wouldn't just be rambling. Knife is fast asleep, and he wouldn't dare wake her. Let sleeping dogs lie and all that nonsense. He pulls up a hex code chart on his phone and tries to decide what exact shade of yellow the accent wall is until Mark returns, bag and wallet in hand.

"The wall's got a hex code of, like,  _F5F13E,_ but what color would you say that is in words? Is it more of chartreuse or a sulfur?"

"Shit, I thought chartreuse was red," calls Mark from the bathroom as he changes. "Is it seriously yellow? Or am I misremembering the color of the wall?"

"You didn't answer the question."

Mark enters the room in grey trunks and a tee shirt with a bath towel slung over his shoulders, and tilts his head at the wall. "I'd call it mustard."

"Mustard's more of an orange hue."

"I don't have my glasses on," he says sarcastically.

"That has nothing to do with seeing color, but I'm gonna assume you were joking." He raises his brows. "You wear glasses?"

"Wore, I guess. Reading glasses, but I kept 'em on most of the time anyways. Roundish tortoiseshell frames. Disgustingly hipster. Not sure where they are." He tucks a strand of loose hair back behind his ear. "Damn, the AM probably has them. That sucks. I really liked those glasses."

"Just buy some new ones," he suggests. "You heading out soon?"

"Yeah. Wanna come with?"

"Absolutely not."

"Why not?"

Damien laughs and shakes his head, but freezes, however, upon realizing that Mark is actually expecting a response. He looks down and coughs. "Uh, I can't swim."

"You... can't swim," repeats Mark, but it's clearly a question.

"Never learned."

"I could teach you," he suggests.

"And Knife could sprout wings and fly. Yeah, not happening."

"You can still come down and just chill out poolside."

Damien considers this for a moment. He could desperately try to entertain himself until Mark gets back and ultimately succumb to boredom, or he could surrender to his lifelong arch nemesis, bodies of water of a depth greater than four feet. Ultimately, it comes down to whichever is of more danger to him. On one hand, the pool could absolutely, _definitely_ have sharks in it, and no amount of logic will convince him otherwise. On the other, tedium tends to lead to him making terrible, reckless decisions, and _he's_ more of a danger to himself than hypothetical pool sharks would be.

He waits in silence for a few long seconds before reluctantly responding, "Fine."

"You put out a bowl of water for the dog, right?"

"Yep."

"Well, then, let's go."

\---

A silver sign in 40-point Times New Roman font declares that the pool area is open until midnight. The space is void of people, an overwhelming relief. He sits down several feet from the edge of the water, observing the way the brilliant blue-green lights, glittering like stars at the bottom of the pool, coat his hands in a soft glow. He rests his fingertips over his bandaged arm and watches as Mark dives in, cutting slickly through the depths of the water before reemerging for a breath at the other side. He moves with an elegance that usually isn't seen in people who've recently awoken from a long coma. Damien gives a reverential grin.

"You swim well," he remarks.

"I was on the swim team in high school."

He smirks. "An artist  _and_ an athlete. You must've been popular."

"Not really, but looking back, I did get invited to a lot of parties. I remember, when I was in my senior year and she was in college, Joanie was always mad at me if I showed up when her friends visited, because all they ever wanted to do was flirt with me instead of hang out with her." He smiles and treads nearer to Damien. "She was a total nerd, but really she was way cooler than me. Still is."

"Do you forgive her for what she did to you? After everything she helped the AM do? After everything she _continues_ to help them do?"

He shakes his head. "Yes. No. I'm not sure."

"Do you trust her?"

"Enough. Not the same as I used to."

Damien pauses in hesitation of what he's about to say. He  _almost_ holds himself back from saying it at all. Almost. "Do you trust  _me_?"

Mark looks him square in the eye and smiles challengingly, warningly. "Do you want me to?" he asks, and dives back under the surface.

He stands and takes a few shaky steps nearer to the pool's edge, kneeling down to watch the lapping waves of the water and Mark's silhouette against the glittering lights. He swims two full laps along the bottom on a single breath before resurfacing. Damien leans a bit downwards towards him. "Your sister thinks I'm a sociopath."

He swipes the water off his eyelids with the back of his hand. The pool's only three-ish feet deep at this end, but he keeps himself submerged almost to his eyes for a while before lifting his chin up to speak. "My sister thinks you _may_ have _a_  personality disorder. Yes, antisocial personality disorder is on the top of her list. As is narcissistic personality disorder. I'd personally consider that one a lot more likely."

Damien simpers amusedly. "Ouch. A bit of a rude diagnosis, eh?"

"Self-absorbed, controlling, entitled, prone to seeking revenge," he begins to list, but the smile doesn't leave his face.

"I see you've listened  _intently_ to her opinion on the matter."

" _Jealous,_ " he continues, and splashes a bit of water at Damien. "Manipulative."

"This is cruel and unusual punishment."

"Entitled. Insensitive. Attention-seeking. And hates being ridiculed. Sound familiar?"

" _Narcissistic personality disorder_ ," he repeats, and moves just a bit closer to the water. "Sounds bad."

"It should."

"Sounds a lot nicer than 'sociopath', though, doesn't it? Almost has a nice ring to it."

"Wow, and to _wonder_ why your therapist wants nothing to do with you. At least you're admitting you have a problem now."

"The first step to recovery," Damien says, a joking tone hinting in his voice.

"God, Joanie would be _amazed_ that you just said that out loud. Such _progress_."

He grins. "Don't push it, Bryant."

"Wouldn't dream of it." He flicks more water at Damien's face, laughing. "C'mon, not even gonna dip your legs in? I don't bite."

"Don't know if you've noticed, sunshine, but I'm wearing black skinny jeans. Not exactly pool friendly."

"Sounds like something a total sissy would say, if you ask me," he teases. "It's just water, it'll dry. You washed the blood off them already, right?"

"Yeah..."

"Just stand in the shallow end with me, it'll barely go up to your waist. Can't drown in three feet of water, even if you are shorter than me."

He blanches. "I am  _not_ shorter than you."

"You are absolutely shorter than me. How have you not noticed this? What are you, five-seven, five-eight? I'm six feet tall, Damien."

"Bullshit."

"Don't believe me? Come here and see. Unless the water's too scary for you," he taunts, taking a step back farther into the depths.

"Hey, Mark? I hate you," says Damien, and he dips his toes into the water, taking the bait. "Jesus, it's cold."

"It's not cold, you're just lame," he says, and offers him his hand. "Come here, we haven't got all day."

He takes it, wincing at this chill of his fingertips, and steps down into the water. The iciness bites at his ankles and weighs down his legs. He's shaking. From the cold, of course. Definitely not from fear, he's not scared. Totally not scared. That would be dumb. 

"Swimming fucking sucks," he spits out. "Can't believe you do this for  _fun._ "

Mark laughs. "You aren't even swimming."

"Don't need to know how to swim to know it sucks." He looks up at Mark. "You're tall."

"Believe me now?"

"Only mostly."

"You're short."

He huffs grumpily. "Am not."

"Like a little kitten. Afraid of water and everything."

"Good think you're a cat person, or I'd be in trouble."

"I'm a dog person, actually. Also, you just took in a stray dog. You'd be in trouble either way."

"Debate settled. I'm getting out."

"So soon? I haven't even tricked you into learning how to swim yet."

"You're cruel, Bryant, you know that?"

"Yeah, but I'm adorable, so I get away with it."

Damien snorts and pulls himself out of the water. The wind has a sharper bite than the pool. He almost wants to sink back in, but opts to just steal Mark's towel instead. Mark follows him out.

"Oh, you bastard. Get your own damn towel!" he says, laughing.

"What was that? I couldn't hear you from all the way down here. You're just too tall."

"Sure, Damien, joke away the Napoleon complex, see if that helps." He steals the towel back from him and dries off his hair with it, grinning goofily as they walk back to their room.

\--- 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> as always, thank you so so so much for reading, and happy season four!!!  
> kudos are so lovely and your comments are always so kind, thank you so much.  
> if u know someone who might like this fic, feel free to link them to it! it'd mean the world.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yay, another long update!! woo this one was fun to write, i hope y'all like it  
> mild blood warning, nothing new, really

x.

"I wonder how much money I'd have to throw at them to convince them to let me use their kitchen," Damien muses, tapping his fingers lightly on the table. They're bruised, he notes to himself. Not badly, they'll heal soon enough, but it's still an obnoxious pain.

"The hotel's kitchen or the hotel's cafe's kitchen? Either way, probably a hell of lot more than you're carrying on your person. Then again, you've got what, a couple thousand?" Mark asks, rolling his eyes.

"In my wallet? About fifteen hundred, I think. Not sure about my bank account." He stops his tapping. "Shit, I actually  _need_ the money now, don't I? I should definitely check my bank account. Ah, hell, not sure how to do that. Do I have to go to the bank, or is that an internet thing?"

"Internet thing, normally. You've probably got your username and password scribbled down somewhere. Why do you even have a bank account in the first place?"

He smiles. "Convincing people to wire me money is a lot more fun than convincing them to hand over a couple large bills. It was even a bit of a challenge sometimes. A more complicated process."

"See, this is the kind of thing that normal, good people would be  _joking_ about. We really are quite the duo, aren't we?"

"'Sun and moon' type duo or 'Ripley and the alien' type duo?"

"Depends. Who's the sun and who's the moon?"

"Wow,  _sunshine,_ I sure do wonder," he says sarcastically, sipping his hot chocolate as Mark rearranges the layers of his sandwich and hums.

"Why _do_ you call me sunshine?"

"Your radiance and glowing personality," he deadpans.

Mark laughs. "Nah, really, why? I'm curious. Humor me."

He pauses for a moment in thought. "It's your eyes, I think."

"Elaborate."

"They remind me of the sun."

"You do know my eyes are brown, right? Like, not even golden or reddish or something. Hell, they're more dark grey than anything."

"Yes, yes, the best eye color. I have to say, I'm very jealous. But that's besides the point -"

"No, you're not brushing that one off that easily. Like, a bazillion people have brown eyes, Damien. They're not exactly special."

"Yeah, but with you they're..." He searches for the right word. "Gravitational. Warm."

Mark takes a bite of his sandwich, clearly waiting for further explanation.

Damien rests his chin on bruised knuckles and frowns. "You know when you start a fire? And you don't feed it, just stoke it and let it burn down, until it's only cinders and that soft sort of charcoal, all smokey and greyish-brown. When the flames aren't glowing anymore, but you can still feel the heat sinking into your skeleton, like a warm breeze just after dusk, y'know? You gotta know the feeling. That's what you're like."

"A dying fire?"

"You know what I mean," he says, and his voice is soft.

"Damien, that was the first time I've ever heard you say something genuinely kind without an ulterior motive."

"Nah, I still have an ulterior motive."

"What is it?"

A coy look falls over his eyes. "I'm just saying it because I love seeing you smile. A purely selfish endeavor of mine."

Mark scoffs. "Yeah fucking right. What're you trying to butter me up for this time? Trying to get me to forgive you for the dog?"

"Alright, fine, fine, you got me. Could you ask the woman at the counter for a cup of coffee?"

He snorts. "You _really_ couldn't do that yourself?"

"She's scary," he says, grinning, as Mark gets up to order for him.

\---

It's a mild-weathered early morning, but from the minute he wakes up, the joints of his fingers are stiff with cold regardless. He flicks the heat in the car to its lowest setting and huffs angrily as Mark immediately turns it back off.

"Feel how cold my hands are," he says, and presses his fingertips beneath the curve of Mark's jaw.

He shakes Damien off and laughs. "Jesus, you weren't kidding."

"So I can turn the heat on?"

"But it's, like, sixty-five degrees out."

"Please?" he says with a wry smile, putting his icy hands back against Mark's neck.

"If it gets you to stop doing that, feel free."

Damien grins at the little victory, but the vents aren't enough to dissuade the chill. He presses his knuckles against them, pretending just for a moment that he's not worsening the bruises. Knife snuffles quietly from the back seat.

He thinks about the time traveller. Sam. Mark's friend. Mark's girlfriend? He had always been so vague on the matter, even with Damien's will forcefully dragging the stories out of him. Maybe even he didn't know. It was certainly a...  _unique_ circumstance.

He thinks about the time traveller, and how she is  _absolutely_ gonna try and kill him the second she sees him. He thinks about Mark's sister, who wouldn't assist in the murder but would definitely sit idly by and pretend she wasn't a witness. He thinks about the strange mind-reader - the glowingly peppy girl with her indelible, terrifying will - who he knows in his core will be even more of a threat to him now than before, though he can't pinpoint a valid reason why. He shivers, and turns the heat up higher. 

"You feeling okay, buddy?" asks Mark, turning down his own vents.

"I have a slight fever, I think. Which is odd, because I don't feel particularly sick."

"Let's hope it's a just a cold or stress or something. I don't think either of us could handle more of your traumatic brain injury symptoms.

He pauses in worry for a moment. "Shit, actually, it's probably stress."

Mark narrows his eyes. "What's got you so stressed?"

"Your... friends. Associates. Sam and the 'gang.'"

"What about them?"

"There's a strong chance they're going to kill me if they get the chance."

He laughs lightly. "They obviously won't... _alright_ , maybe they _might._ But if I know you in the slightest, you've done plenty to deserve it."

"Very reassuring, Bryant. I feel so safe and protected."

"I won't let them murder you, how's that?" he asks, sparing a glance over in Damien's direction. "Can't promise there won't be some serious shouting, though."

"As long as my skeleton and viscera remain relatively intact, I'm happy."

"Isn't your skeleton already broken as hell?"

"My skeleton is fine, assuming you didn't lie to me. And I said  _relatively._ "

"How is your arm doing, by the way? Shit, I definitely should've re-bandaged that yesterday, I'm so sorry. It won't heal well like that."

"My immune system would thank you."

"And you wouldn't?"

"Depends on how bad it hurts to rip the bandages off."

"There will be no  _ripping_ involved, you psycho. They're not adhesive."

"The bandages may not be adhesive, but the dried blood definitely will be."

"Damn it, Damien, why didn't you remind me? That can't be good for your body, no wonder you feel like shit. Here, I'll pull over -"

"Nah, nah, we're almost at the end of our trip. We'll be at Dr. B's office in, like, half and hour, right? Do it then. Maybe it'll even earn me some pity points from Sam and her gang."

"They aren't a  _gang._ And good luck with that," Mark scoffs. They drive on.

\---

For the few short moments they wait with the glaring receptionist lady, he stands on his tiptoes, resting his chin resting on Mark's shoulder from behind. Knife lays down along the sides of their feet. He wonders if the woman is glaring because of the dog or because of his past... transgressions.

"You're too tall, I can't use you as a proper meat shield," he jokes quietly.

"Tragic," Mark responds with a pained smile, tilting his head as if he's listening to something. He takes a tumultuous breath just before the door opens. 

If Bright has fire in her eyes, Sam's got a volcano. She looks like she's about to throw hands at the first person to move a muscle, provided that that person is Damien. The mind-reader girl stands behind them, looking not furious so much as very confused and a bit frightened.

"Mark..." trails off Bright, with a mess of different emotions plaster across her face and overwhelming her voice. She look like she might actually cry.

"Hey, sis," says Mark quietly, hands jumping in front of his eyes, and he takes a step forward away from Damien, who crouches to hide behind the dog instead. "And Sam, it's... I..."

Sam offers a fond and joyous smile to Mark, before twisting her attention back to Damien, taking a vicious step towards him, hands clenched into hooked talons, ready to strike. 

Mark sighs and places his hands over his temples instead. "Jesus christ, please don't hit him, you'll just give him another concussion."

"How do I know he's not _making_ you say that?" she hisses, not looking away from him for a second. Her voice is boiling over with vitriol and venom. "How do I know this isn't all an elaborate ruse, and he never even lost his stupid powers in the first place?"

"You really think he's clever enough to concoct such a devious plan?" Mark tries to joke, but his voice is cut off as he winces at something and takes a seat.

"Hey!" he yelps, offended. Knife sits up and barks. The receptionist lady moves into a different room to give them all some privacy.

"Can you please make the mind-reader go away?" says Mark, dazed, to no one in particular. He digs his knuckles into his temples, grimacing. "You just _had_ to bring the mind-reader."

"The... Chloe?" asks Sam.

"Hey, hey, stop apologizing," Mark insists. "It's not your fault. Shit, you probably already heard me thinking that, didn't you? Yeah? Okay. I'm sorry too. Damn it, you already knew that. This is gonna take a minute to get used to."

"Mark, who are you talking to?" asks Bright, worry strangling her words. "Chloe?"

"In case you've _somehow_ managed to forget," Damien chimes in mockingly, "your brother's a mimic. A mildly dysfunctional one, but still a mimic."

"Shit, Mark, I'm so sorry, I wasn't expecting you until a little later. I didn't know Chloe would be here when... I wasn't sure if you could still..."

"You vocalizing this just makes me hear it twice as often. I know you didn't mean for this to happen," he says. "This is not gonna be fun, though."

Damien justs sits on the floor next to Knife and snarls bitterly at the group, Mark excluded. "We should go."

"No, it's fine. Chloe says she'll go. Uh, or, she thought it. Sorry."

Chloe, who hasn't said a word the whole time, is practically halfway out the door already. "I really should leave. Apologies. So nice to meet the famed Mark, though! Guess I wish it was under different circumstances," she says, rushed but grinning, and leaves. "See you all soon!"

Mark's breathing slowly steadies, and he eventually moves over to Damien, patting Knife on the ears. Damien spares him a smile, watching as Bright stares at the trio with a churning mixture of horror and guilt. 

"I can't believe you brought a dog into my office," she says, weepy-eyed, and she and Sam practically throw themselves onto Mark's shoulders in some attempt of a hug. 

"Her name's Knife," Mark says quietly, peacefully.

"If you _ever_ name a dog something that stupid again, I'll cry."

"You're already crying," he notes.

"Then I'll cry twice as much, Mark," she says, and as much as Damien hates to admit it, it's almost a touching moment.  _Almost._ He hasn't sunk quite that low yet.

"Here, let's go talk. Without..." Sam says, glaring at Damien. "That."

"We can talk with him here, you know," Mark says, still petting Knife. "Actually, I gotta go grab some bandages and stuff from the car. You three can... chat for a while. I'm sure you guys have a _lot_ to talk about, too. And please,  _please_ don't hit him, I'm serious about the brain injury thing. Oh, and could someone get some soapy water and a rag from the bathroom or a supply closet or something?"

Sam huffs. "Mark, you mean the world to us, but we're not gonna help you cosset this narcissistic,  _evil_ little -"

"Sam, please just get the water," Bright interrupts, sighing. Sam prepares to spit out an argument, but instead just closes her mouth and leaves in silence. Mark does the same, leaving an exasperated Dr. Bright and a cowering Damien alone in the room.

He says nothing, just letting her stand there and glower as he pretends to direct his attention to the dog. 

"Did you jump in front of the car?" asks Bright, voice stiff, and the question shocks him. He was expecting shouting, screaming even. An endless lecture and a string of vulgarities, maybe. Not this.

"Excuse me?"

"You heard me."

"I... no? I did not jump in front of the car." He waits for any sort of follow-up question, but it doesn't come. "Not gonna yell at me?"

"There's nothing I can say that you don't already damn well know, Damien," she says coldly. "Except maybe one thing."

"What's that?"

"If I find out that you hurt my brother in _any_ way, I will not hesitate to _destroy you_." She growls the last two words.

There isn't the slightest bit of doubt in Damien's mind about the truth of that statement.

"I know I haven't exactly given you much reason to trust me, Dr. B, but I hope you understand somewhere in that frigid therapist brain of yours that I could  _never_ hurt Mark. Ever. Misguided or not, everything I've done I've done to protect him."

She doesn't look like she fully believes him, but she doesn't give any retort, instead just watching with morbid curiosity as he playfully pokes at the dog's paws.

Sam enters with a small bucket and a rag only a few moments before Mark does with antibiotic cream and a roll of bandages. She looks like she has a lot to say, but holds her tongue regardless. 

Damien takes the supplies from Sam and sits cross-legged on the floor in front of Damien. Knife curls up beside him, and he unsuccessfully attempts to hide his smile. "Look on the bright side, Sam," he laughs, "you'll get to see him in a great deal of pain."

"Thanks for the warning," bites out Damien as Mark begins to unravel the bandages bound around his wrist. As it gets closer to the main injury on his elbow, the old blood begins to glue the gauze against his skin.

"So how've you been?" asks Sam awkwardly. "Since we last talked. On the phone, I mean."

Mark carefully lowers Damien's forearm into the bucket, letting the soapy water dissolve away the muck of red. The skin beneath is jagged and tinged with the angry violets and blues of a bruise, but it looks like it's healing decently. The warmth of the water is an unwelcome bite, but Mark handles his arm gently, taking note whenever Damien winces from the fiery pain. "Good. I got a dog."

"Yeah, I... I saw that. She's cute."

"How are you?"

"Good. I'm doing good. I think."

"And you, Joanie?"

She smiles. "Stressed, of course, but better now that I know you're safe."

Damien hisses through his teeth as Mark tears the bandages away from his submerged elbow. A dark mess of dried blood tints the sloshing water as he raises his arm from the bucket, letting Mark clean it off with the rag and some antibiotic cream. The flayed gash looks visually a lot worse than he had expected, but it's certainly better healed than before.

"How're  _you_ holding up, Damien?" he asks, not looking up from his work.

"Just _great,_ sunshine," he says bitterly, and winces in pain as Mark dries the rest of the soap and a bit of fresh blood from his arm.

"Oh, shush, and hold still," he grumbles half-affectionately as he winds the new bandage gently around Damien's arm and ties it off. "So, Damien. Care to tell the class why your thoughts were foggier than everyone else?"

"Foggier?" says Bright, clearly confused. "You mean you could actually hear them?"

"Uh, yeah, that is kinda how Chloe's power works. Damien's thoughts were just really unclear for some reason. Like, I could tell that he was thinking bitchy jealous thoughts when Sam smiled at me -"

Damien sputters crossly at the accusation.

"- but they weren't proper, clear thoughts like everyone else. They were more rippled and abstract, like someone put a fog over them."

"Chloe was never able to read Damien's mind because their powers were mirrors of each other," explains Bright, and it's clear that her scientific mind is reeling happily at the strange occurrence. "I suppose now that his ability is gone, permanently or not, his mind can be read now, but not the same way everyone else's can."

"What else was he thinking?" asks Sam curiously.

"Some Rihanna song," Mark replies, smiling wickedly. "And definitely something about how pretty he thinks my eyes are."

"You shut your whore mouth," bites out Damien, barring his teeth. He swears, just for a second, that he hears Bright fighting off laughter.

\---

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you so much for the comments and kudos!! it always makes my day to read what you guys think about the chapters <3


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> wow did i totally call it or what?  
> honestly though i'm so excited to see the similarities and differences between this au and canon with the new episodes. i can't wait to see what the writers do with it!!  
> anyways, same mild warnings as usual.

xi.

As he watches Chloe painstakingly embroider mint leaves and white roses into the sheer, draping fabric of her current sculpture, he can't help but think of Mark's past ramblings on color symbolism. She's cloaked in the lightest pastel blues - purity, tranquility, sometimes honesty - but the dress glitters with navy and a faint pink sheen when her studio lights hit it at just the right angle. He wonders if she chose them deliberately.

She notices his presence, but says nothing. He supposes his thoughts warned her of his approach long before he entered.

"That's... a very nice sculpture," he attempts, but the words feel unnatural on his tongue. As pretty as it is, he has no idea what it's supposed to be. Art has never been his subject of choice. It's moments like these that he remembers why.

"It's an abstract. Not anything in particular. Just an expressive piece, mostly," she interjects.

"How did you -"

"You sounded confused. Your thoughts, I mean."

He looks away from the sculpture and back at Chloe. "So, it's true. You can hear me now." His voice is bitter and dark. "I'm never gonna be fixed, am I?"

"You know, Damien, you think surprisingly little about death and sadness considering how emo you pretend to be. The clearest thought I've heard from you so far was about pastels and flowers, with only a little blood." She pauses. "Oh, and my dress. Yes, I made this a while ago. It's not perfect, but it's comfy enough."

He sighs, admittedly grateful for the change of topic. "That's not quite what I was wondering, but it does answer one of my questions well enough."

"Oh, sorry about that. Your mind is pretty smudged, to be honest. Like I'm looking through really badly warped glass. Or someone else's contact lenses. Still a lot better than the vaguely threatening void that it used to be, but, y'know." She gestures absently with her hands, almost dropping her needle and thread in the process.

"Mark described it as a fog."

"That's a much better description, actually," she says, smiling for a brief moment before her expression falls. "God, I feel so guilty. He knows how sorry I am about that, right? Mind-reading can be a real handful sometimes, I should've _known_ , I shouldn't have been there -"

"The day Mark Bryant holds a grudge over something that stupidly insignificant is the day hell freezes over, trust me on that one." His words are light and sarcastic in tone, but he knows she understands his sentiment. She can hear its foggy silhouette, after all. _Damn it all_. He has a reputation to uphold.

(Ugh. Damien showing _sentiment_. Comforting someone, and meaning it - how pathetic of him. Maybe hell really _has_ frozen over.)

"Why are you so disgusted by the idea of feeling weak?" she says, quietly enough that he's not sure she meant for him to hear.

"I don't like you," he says, and though he knows it's not a real response, he'll do anything to avoid answering the question.

"You know, I don't think that's quite true," she says, and smiles. "I just think you're used to your own megalomania. You feed off the 'uniqueness' of it, because you think it's all you have."

"Don't psychoanalyze me, weirdo. You sound bitchy," he warns. She's too smart for her own good, really. Or just too powerful of a mind-reader.

"See, that's exactly it. Your words say 'weirdo' and 'bitch', but your thoughts are just curiosity and praise. What is it that makes you act like empathy is a disease, when you clearly feel it, at least a little? You're just like everyone else. You just make a lot worse choices than the rest of us."

Great. Just great. Bright thinks he's a sociopath, Mark thinks he's got narcissistic personality disorder, and now Chloe seems to be working towards some shitty crack theory of her own. Step right up, folks, and diagnose the broken atypical.

"You think of yourself as broken," she says, contemplative. "Why?"

"You... how did you hear that so clearly?"

"I'm not sure, really," she says, frowning for a moment when she accidentally pricks her fingertip with the needle. "It was just... there."

He shifts backwards slightly, not knowing what to think.

"Are you gonna answer my question?" she asks.

"Which was?"

"Why do you view yourself as broken? Dr. Bright was telling me about all the times you whined about no one being able to relate to you. Now that your ability is gone, everybody can relate to you, because you're just like everyone else. Shouldn't you be happy?"

Shouldn't. He. Be. _Happy._

_Shouldn't he be?_

Things sucked, for a long time. They started bad, and he clung to it, and in doing so only made things worse. Things sucked, and he looked at the situation and blamed it on his own weakness. Being strong meant not caring, and not caring meant not empathizing. Not empathizing made him strong.

And then Mark came along, and showed him how wrong he was.

Because, yes, not empathizing made him strong. But it also made him worse.

"Why can't I be both?" he asks, half to Chloe and half to himself.

"What, strong and uncaring?" she says, doubtful, untrusting.

He shakes his head. "Broken and happy."

She pauses her work to look up at him, but says nothing, only staring, like she's trying to listen for any hint of cruelty, any sign of ill will or lies or misunderstanding.

"I'm damaged goods," he continues. "Definitely not in tip-top shape. Injured, powerless, and a little bit of a mess."

Chloe laughs.

"Alright, fine, fine, a huge mess." He rolls his eyes. "And as shitty as I feel about it all, as much as I tried to convince myself that the world is ending over it, I just... I know that this isn't it. That this isn't all there is. And, theoretically -"

She smiles, and it's the purest smile Damien's ever seen - Mark's included. He _hates_ it.

"- _theoretically_ , I could be happy, too," he finishes.

"Hypothetically, of course," she jokes, returning to her embroidery. She's switched to different flowers now. "Nah, optimism is important. Always keep a good outlook."

"Marigolds or mums?"

"You really know your flowers," she says, slightly surprised, "but neither. Zinnias."

He looks back at them, giving himself a moment to take in the detail of the soft white and yellow threads. "Mixed colored zinnias."

She hums. "Tell Mark I'm sorry, yeah?"

Damien nods.

\---

"You've given my dog a collar," he notes to Bright, who Mark had, for some reason, entrusted to dogsit while Damien begrudgingly gave the two space to catch up. "It's stupid."

"It's practical, Robert," she scoffs.

He turns to Mark, deeply offended. "Oh, you bastard, what else did you tell her?"

Mark grins. "Not much. I still need blackmail material left over, you know."

"My dog's wearing a girly-ass pastel pink collar. Isn't that enough emotional pain for one day?"

"What's wrong with pink?"

"She's a badass, tough dog, Mark. Her name is _Knife_ , for fuck's sake!" He lowers himself to the floor to pat her head. "She needs a badass, tough collar to match."

"So, what you're saying is that 'girly' can't be badass or tough," says Bright, crossing her arms in amusement.

"That's not - I didn't - oh, fuck off, she's way too cool for you anyways. I'm revoking your dog privileges." He turns to Mark. "You too, fucker. You enabled this."

"Hey! She's my dog, too, jerk," Mark protests.

"Oh, _now_ you admit it. I'm keeping her with me, though, right?" Damien asks, pausing. "Aren't you, like, homeless now? You just gonna stay with your sister or Time Travel Chick for the time being?"

He freezes. "Oh, _fuck,_ I don't have an apartment anymore. Shit, Joanie, where's my stuff? Please tell me my landlord didn't pawn it all."

She shakes her head. "No, of course not. I brought it all into my home for safekeeping after... after. Well. After you were gone. It wasn't much stuff, I was surprised. But admittedly, you might need to buy some new furniture."

Marks eyes light up. "You wouldn't happen to have my glasses around, would you?"

"Your reading glasses? I don't... wait." Bright holds up a hand for a second before walking over to her liquor cabinet, shuffling various half-full bottles around.

"Oh, yay, alcohol," beams Mark just as Damien says "Ew, alcohol." Bright almost laughs as she fishes an object out from the shelf, and returns to Mark triumphantly with some dust-covered thing clutched in her hands like a trophy.

_Mark's glasses._

He takes them from her, grinning wildly, and places them over his eyes. "You have _no_ idea how happy you just made me."

(Alright, fine, Damien lied. Even Chloe's pure, peppy smile doesn't rival Mark's glowingly fond one. He's just glad she's not here to hear him think this. Or, god forbid, let Mark hear him think this.)

His smile drops slightly, replaced with a dark worry. Damien vows to personally fight whoever or whatever caused it.

"I have no home," he says, placid but hollow.

"Mark, you can absolutely stay with me," Bright insists. "Really. It's the least I could do. And I'm sure Sam will offer the same, if you'd prefer."

"I... alright. But it's still your house, or Sam's house. _I_ have no home."

"Considering I've been technically conning my landlord for - well, a lot of years," interjects Damien, running his fingers through his hair, "I'm probably in the same boat. And I don't have -" He gestures vaguely. "- like, family or friends to stay with. Or anywhere, really. Or a job. So, dibs on the car for now, I guess."

The three look at each other with strange expressions.

"Shit," says Mark. "We both have to go apartment hunting."

"This is _just_ like House Hunters International."

"This is nothing like House Hunters International, Damien."

\---

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tysm for reading! comments are greatly loved and appreciated))


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> honestly the most obnoxiously saccharine chapter yet. sugar sweet. it's ridiculous. i'm a real sap.  
> i'm thinking about 'ending' this fic soon and writing the rest as a sequel? nothing would change update-wise, it'd literally be just the same, i just might do a little time skip or something and continue the timeline with different plot shit. it's entirely unnecessary idk i just sorta feel like it. comment what you think!

xii.

"I don't fucking care if we can 'share the dog that way', Damien, we're not gonna be roommates. Not happening."

"Whatever, I don't need you anyways," he huffs resentfully, and pauses. "C'mon, Mark," he whines, "I don't wanna sleep in a _car._ The two minutes I spent knocked out in the back seat after getting hit was bad enough."

Mark says something quietly, under his breath, that sounds vaguely like _'thirty-three minutes'._ His hand shifts from his old, recently-reclaimed laptop to the teacup he'd been offered by Bright, soft steam floating in swirls above it like a spattering of moths.

"What kind of tea?"

"Jasmine."

"Doesn't smell like just jasmine."

"Probably because I poured some rum into it."

"Define _some._ "

"Y'know. Enough."

Damien sighs with a smile traced across his lips. "Answer my question, loser."

"Which one?"

"Why can't we just pick one two-bedroom place and split the rent? We've been co-habitating for, like, an eternity anyways."

Mark laughs into his barely-tea. "You're a maladjusted mess, for one. You're probably on a dozen different government watch lists and half a dozen assassins' hit lists. And, you have no work experience, no job, and no profitable skills. How exactly do you expect to pay your theoretical half of the rent?"

"Uh, _excuse_ you, I have eight thousand in the bank. And  _plenty_ of profitable skills."

Mark raises his brows. "And those are?"

Damien grins. "A charming demeanor."

"You fuckin' wish. Any others?"

"I'll have to get back to you on that one." He swipes the teacup from Mark's hands and hovers his face hesitantly over the hot porcelain. The caustic scent of molasses and woodsmoke - and maybe raspberry soap - hazes across his nose. The jasmine is barely even a hint. "Smells pretty. Smells inedible. I'll never understand people who drink."

"I drink to forget."

"How lame. Drinking to remember is much cooler," Damien jokes. He hands the cup back, fingertips still radiating with its heat. He listens for a moment to a set of approaching footsteps, delicate but definite. _Bright's_ , he realizes. She swings into place in front of Mark and tilts her head grumpily.

"You let Damien into my  _home?_ Without, I don't know, asking  _permission?_ "

Mark winces guiltily. "Uh... to be - to be fair, he _probably_ would've just walked in anyways. He doesn't exactly have the strongest concept of what personal space is."

She says something biting in response, but Damien isn't listening anymore, instead choosing to wander to the opposite side of the room. The place is decorated nicely, expensively, but not warmly, he notes. Anthropological relics and dusty vases line some shelves, worn psychology textbooks others. There are no family photos, no poor but charming art, no clutter of any kind. A violin sits idly beside a file cabinet with its bow directly beside it. The way she's placed it makes it look less like an instrument and more like a sculptural piece. For a moment he worries it may not even have strings, but the fears are replaced by wonderment as he moves towards it. He peers inside.

"Carlo Giu... Giuseppe. Carlo Giuseppe Testore," he reads off the tattered label.

Bright turns to him, her expression a strange mix of fretfulness, distrust, and appreciation. "It was a gift. Many years ago."

"It's beautiful."

She nods.

He takes it gently into his hands, ignoring her weak glare of protest. "What is this, eighteenth century? Italian?"

Another nod.

"May I?" he asks, gesturing to the bow.

"Given that this is the first time I have ever in my  _life_ heard you ask permission for something before doing it," she says, humor lightening her voice, "yes, Damien, you may."

He smiles at the little victory and rests the violin just above his collarbone, fingers dusting over the strings. He listens closely to the faint hum. "Catgut. Fuck yeah. And it's in tune already. Why's that?"

"I... used to play, when I was younger. Not well, of course. I tune it constantly in case I ever decide to pick it up again," she says quietly. Mark just watches the two interact in bewilderment.

"Would you look at that, you're sharing personal info with me  _willingly._ I must be doing something right," Damien says, and begins to play. 

He doesn't even bother warming up. It's long beyond muscle memory at this point. His hands move elegantly and without forethought from the first note on, a chain reaction of motions linked to their respective tones. His vibrato is a bit rusty, not his best work, but every note he plays is technically excellent, which he's quite proud of, given how long it's been since he's played. That, and the gashes on his arm, which he refuses to let rest. Then again, it's quite difficult to have any flaws in the execution of a piece if the arrangement is your own personal, precise work. He doesn't even need to keep his eyes on his hands. He chooses to watch Mark instead.

(Mark is giving that soft sort of smile again. Damien melts.)

He ends the piece on a double stop and lets the harmony reverberate gently into the otherwise silent room. Bright looks like she's torn between snatching the violin back or shaking his hand in appreciation. Mark just beams. Neither says anything.

"What a fucking _sick_ violin," he offers, and sets it back on its stand, loosening the hair on the bow before placing it back, too. "You should gift it to Mark so I have an excuse to play it more often."

"You are... a concert-level classical violinist," Bright states.

"Yep."

"An  _exceptionally talented_ concert-level violinist. Just... just for fun?"

"I don't really get out much."

She shakes her head in disbelief and twists over to Mark. "Did you know about this?"

"I... no. Damien, what the fuck?" Mark removes the laptop from his lap and stands.

Damien laughs at their gawking. "Nocturne opus nine, number one, if either of you were wondering."

"Isn't that a piano-only piece?" Bright muses curiously.

"Only if you're a sissy bitch who doesn't arrange your own pieces."

"You're un-fucking-believable," Mark says, but he's still smiling as he throws his arms around Damien's shoulders. "What the  _fuck,_ dude. You're an amazing musician and you chose tormenting strangers with your abilities over pursuing a career in music?"

"I don't know, sunshine. I don't know." He rests his hands awkwardly at the back of Mark's shoulder blades, blindsided by the... embrace? Is this hugging? Who knows. 

"Boys are weird. You two are both weird," Bright sighs, shaking her head dejectedly as she attempts a sip of Mark's tea. "What the hell? Mark, is this  _rum?_ " 

"It's, like, sixty-forty. Maybe eighty-twenty," he responds, chin still resting on Damien's shoulder.

Mark smells like flowers and blood and cinnamon and, yes, alcohol. The cinnamon is a more Damien-typical one, which leaves Mark with just floral booze and wet copper. Actually, judging by the mild, cold pain near his wrist, the blood scent is probably Damien's, too. He  _really_ needs to stop moving his arm around so much. 

He silently takes his left wrist into his right hand and steps back, hoping to evade Mark's worrying gaze.

"Get over here, idiot," grumbles Mark, nudging his arm back into view to assess the damage.

"Nothing slips past you, does it?" Damien asks him.

"Everything slips past me, you're just exceptionally bad at hiding things."

"Fair, fair."

"How exactly do you expect this shit to heal if you keep pretending nothing's wrong?"

"Placebo."

Mark smiles and shakes his head. "Think you'll ever learn to stop tearing open old wounds?"

"Unlikely. But if I do, you'll probably be the one to teach me."

There's a metaphor somewhere in there, but he's too busy being led by Mark to Bright's medicine cabinet to figure it out.

\---

As Bright brews some fresh, non-alcoholic tea, they sit in comfortable silence. Mark rewinds the new bandage, maybe a little too tipsy for the delicate task at hand, but he does a solid job regardless. His fingertips press just a bit too hard into Damien's bruises, and he winces, attempting for a moment to will Mark into lessening his grip, before he remembers.

Damien's light laugher interrupts the quiet. "Not having powers sucks."

Mark smiles flutteringly. "What would you do without me?"

"Bleed out, probably. Reconsidering my roommate offer?" He tilts his head softly, encouragingly. Twisting his words to meet Mark's. Moulding his voice into the perfect pathos tone.

Mark catches on to what he's doing almost immediately. "You're as much of an emotionally manipulative sycophant as ever, I see."

"Profitable skill number two. Think of all the money I could save you on speeding tickets and posh coffee."

"An enticing offer."

"One you'll say yes to?"

"We'll see."

"Say no," calls Bright from the kitchen in the most overwhelmingly older-sister voice - scolding, caring, and a little bit taunting.

"You sound like Mom," Mark retorts jokingly, and ties off the last strand of bandage in a completely unwarranted but almost endearing bow. Damien smiles.

Sam swings by ten minutes later, glares at him, and steals half the tea. Bright - Dr. B? Joan? Joanie? - exchanges bants with Mark, and Mark responds with grins and childhood stories that Sam seems to already be privy to. Damien jumps in halfway through the conversation to defend himself from Mark's relentless teasing about his inability to swim, hatred for spicy food, and overwhelming lack of knowledge in all things Harry Potter. 

(And, for the slightest moment, he feels like part of a family.)

\---

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> basically, you're all angels and i can't thank you enough for your kindness. kudos and comments are, as always always, loved and appreciated.


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> woo, another chapter! this one was super fun to write but it took me way longer than usual lmao oh well  
> no warnings, lots of fluff, a lil angst, and then a ton more fluff

xiii.

He's forged a strange set of relationships over the past week or so.

Mark is, in a sense, everything to him. And it sucks. Damien's spent his whole life fucking things up so badly with people that he'd never had to worry about reliance. But with Mark... he's practically become dependent. Even more so over the past week, which is _stupid._ It's  _lame._  Mark's just some guy _._ Just, like, a random dude with poor conversational skills and lots of emotional trauma and a mildly interesting ability, nothing inherently special, but -

\- but that isn't true. There's something crushingly unique about him. Maybe it's the way he scribbles little notes and drawings in the margins of books with soft colored pencils. Maybe it's his terrible cooking skills, or his obsession with obscure '90s video games, or the way he clings to his old camera like it's some precious and incredible thing. Maybe it's just his stupid fucking smile. He just feels  _important_  to Damien.

And then there's Dr. Bright. He'd expected to be treated like an arch nemesis by Bright, not a mild nuisance. He suspects she views him less as a rabid lion and more like a housecat that keeps leaving mangled dove corpses at her doorstep. She still speaks rarely and bitterly to him when he's around, but she seems to have accepted that Damien's closeness to Mark means he isn't going anywhere any time soon.

Sam isn't much different, though her particular brand of bitterness is far more venomous and strict. Damien has watched her repeatedly and vehemently attempt to threaten him and drive Mark away from him, which is shitty, but admittedly well-deserved. He's wholeheartedly surprised, however, that Sam's and Bright's behaviors are not swapped.

The two boys - whatever their names are - he's seen once or twice, and only briefly. They're grossly lovey-dovey with each other and only ever talk about school and feelings and other useless shit. They bore him. 

Chloe is a different story. He thinks that maybe, in another world, had he been a different person living a different life, they could've been the best of friends. He also thinks they could've just as easily ended up as sworn enemies, doomed to destroy each other or die trying.

But it's not another world, and he's not a different person, and thus they are neither. She still scares the  _shit_ out of him, and he's fairly certain the feeling is mutual. But there's something about her company that's strangely soothing. He'll sit in semi-silence with her as she sculpts or sketches, occasionally assisting her with structural and dimensional calculations, mostly just existing beside her without purpose as she absently listens to his thoughts.

Today he's wandered beside her to some pompous but unbusy Starbucks where she's promised to reintroduce herself to Mark under more controlled circumstances. He tells her it's a shitty idea to be doing this in a public space - and thinks it as loudly as he can - but she's insistent, and counteracts his argument by pointing out that if Damien truly thought that, he wouldn't even be here to add another mind to the mess.

Honestly, he's not even sure why he _is_ here. 

(That's a lie.)

The _last_ thing he wants is for Mark to be seeing inside his thoughts.

(Another lie.)

But it's not like he has anything to hide.

(Lies, lies, lies.)

Mark has already downed half a double espresso by the time they arrive. His DSLR is hanging off the side of his hip, his glasses on the top of his head, and a soft brown scarf twisted loosely around his neck. He shakes Chloe's hand, and, after a short moment, the hesitant smile drops from his expression.

"Why not?" Mark asks to seemingly no one. 

Chloe shakes her head hurriedly in response. They exchange a few glances as Chloe moves across the room to order her coffee.

"I think he deserves to know," Mark vocalizes a few minutes later upon her return, and Damien becomes deeply worried and very, very confused. Mark just looks apologetically at him.

"Just... can we drop it?" Chloe says quietly. "Can we just talk about this later? Just for now, let's just... let's just sit and have a drink and chat about normal people things. Like normal people do."

Mark pauses for a beat and nods.

Damien looks between the two with impatience. "Anybody gonna tell me what you were just chatting about in secret brain language? Or am I staying out of the loop on this?"

Mark glares at the wall and opens his mouth to speak, but says nothing, just shakes his head, clearly conflicted.

Chloe's voice becomes more urgent. "Mark, please, do  _not -_ " 

"Your thoughts are clearer than they were before, Damien. A lot clearer."

All three of them sit in stunned silence for what must be only seconds but feels a hell of a lot longer.

Clearer. Clearer? What the fuck does he mean,  _clearer?_ What about the fog, the fog that meant that there was still some hint of his powers left? That there was something there, something real, and he wasn't just some poor helpless bastard in all of this? The one last _fucking_ thing that he had been clinging onto with some demented form of hope. It's not gone, it can't be gone. It  _can't_ be. He's  _lying._ Which is also impossible, because Mark would  _never_ lie, not to him -

"I'm not lying," bites out Mark quietly.

That... that proves nothing. He's guessing, or he's intuiting meaning from his expression or posture or something, but he's not - he couldn't be -

"'He's guessing, or he's intuiting meaning from my expression or posture or something, but he's not, he couldn't be,'" Mark repeats, a word-for-word reiteration of Damien's thoughts. The bastard.

Damien takes a few shallow breaths and sighs into his hands.  _Hey, fuck you, Chloe, for hiding this,_ he thinks,  _and fuck you too, Mark, for telling me._

"Ignorance is bliss," shrugs Chloe.

He's not sure if he agrees or not. "Go to hell," he growls, but it's useless. They both know he doesn't mean it. He's still pissed, though. Mark owes him, like, eight coffees. Chloe gets a pass. This is her first impropriety against him.

"Where's our dog?" asks Mark, clearly desperate to change the subject.

While Mark can almost certainly hear it in his thoughts, he says it aloud anyways, maybe to humor him, maybe because he still hasn't gotten used to the whole mind-reading thing yet. "Tall Kid and Short Kid went hiking. Short Kid wanted to bring her because he thinks hiking is boring. I let him."

"Tall... oh my god, you mean Caleb and Adam. You're ridiculous," Mark snorts into his coffee. He smiles, and with his smile, the mood of the room lightens. Damien leans his head against Mark's shoulder.

"See, here's the problem with Mark, Damien," Chloe begins, semi-jokingly. "Either you're in love with him, or you're absolutely fascinated with him, or you've just literally never experienced friendship before. I can't tell which. I don't even think _you_ know which. But either way, don't fuck this up. You're a lot happier when you're by his side, and he's an angel for putting up with you."

Mark has to cover his face with a napkin to avoid spilling espresso everywhere as he breaks down laughing.

"Bite me," snaps Damien.

"No, it's sweet," Mark lilts through laughter.

"I am not  _sweet._ Take that back."

"A real softie," adds Chloe

"I hate you both."

"Love you too," chime Mark and Chloe in unison. They offer each other matching grins and high-five.

\---

Admittedly, ten dollars is  _probably_ too much to tip for a four-dollar hot chocolate, but he can't be certain. Tipping is an odd tradition which Damien hasn't quite gotten the hold of yet.

Chloe laughs, but argues that it's the least the three can do after taking up all the nice lounge chairs for a solid two hours. She's sitting diagonally across her chair, as causal as Damien has ever seen her, swinging her feet as she texts goofy selfies with Mark to Bright and Sam. She even manages to snap one with Damien in it, though in it he's glaring and covering half his face with his cup. And Mark's almost gotten the hang of tuning out thoughts when they get too loud.

"Ah! I almost forgot," he says, leaning in closer to Mark to show him the listing on his phone screen. "I think I found a place? To live, I mean."

"Lay it on me."

"It's twelve hundred a month -"

Mark raises his brows.

"This is an expensive city, get off my dick. It's downtown-ish, but, like, a nook. Not the hottest location, except for night life. Small place, surprisingly 'aesthetic', the kind of shit bloggers would lose their minds over. Y'know, industrial sort of style, a little dark, a little minimalist, weirdly high ceilings for an apartment."

"I'm listening."

"Dog friendly, two bedrooms, cool lighting fixture on the ceiling -"

Mark laughs. "What was that middle one?"

"Dog friendly."

"You're still stuck on that 'roommates' shit, huh?" smiles Mark.

"Dog friendly!" Damien insists.

"Tell you what - if you can prove to me that you are capable of earning a stable income of any kind, I will happily share an apartment with you."

"Define 'income.'"

"Grifting is _not_ income," Mark warns, frowning.

"It is if you're good at it."

" _Damien._ "

"What about hacking?"

"You can hack?"

"I dabble."

"Hacking is still grifting."

Damien pouts. "Is it still grifting if I leave the proletariat alone?"

" _Excuse me?_ "

"C'mon, sunshine, I'll only hack the aristocracy."

"Fuck off."

He pauses in thought. "Busking?"

"I'd kill to see Damien busk," interjects Chloe. "What instrument?" She pauses, probably to read his thoughts. "Ah, violin."

"Busking isn't really profitable enough, is it?" Mark asks.

"Can be," says Chloe. "It's a pretty solid city for busking. How good are you?"

"Very," says Damien, just as Mark says "Fucking  _absurdly_ good."

"Then it'd probably be livable if you worked hard as hell, but it wouldn't really cover emergencies or luxuries or anything. Also, you'd probably be broke as hell in winter, unless you find a way to play violin in mittens."

So, completely unsustainable. If he could just make a compromise...

"It depends. What's the compromise?" asks Mark. The mind-reading fuck.

"I busk... once each weekend, summer months. And I appropriate my computer skills for some  _mildly_ illegal hacking and conning of the bourgeoisie."

"No crime!"

" _Twice_ each weekend, summer months."

"It's practically already past summer."

"Summer and fall."

Mark sighs. "How's this? If you busk Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, every single month, I will turn a blind eye to whatever you choose to do with your hacking skills."

Ugh. _Winter?_

"Yes, winter."

But his hands -

"Buy some fingerless gloves."

"Fuck you, I'm not a scene kid," Damien grumbles.

"You're pretty much a scene kid, edgelord," cuts in Chloe.

"Do I at least get holidays off?"

"As if you even celebrate holidays," scoffs Mark.

"I celebrate holidays! I celebrate..." He pauses, desperately trying to think of an example. "Arbor day?"

"You don't even know what arbor day is."

"What about... Thanksday? Thankday?"

"For the love of god,  _please_ tell me you aren't trying to say Thanksgiving."

"Ah, yes, Thanksgiving! The best holiday."

"Thanksgiving is on a Thursday."

"It's on Thursday _every year_?"

"Every year."

"Shit." Damien laughs lightly. "Fine. Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays. But you're buying groceries."

Mark pauses in an attempt to understand this comment. "Oh my god, you're scared of grocery stores?"

"I like small markets where I can get niche shit. Big stores are scary as shit. Too many people. Which will only be worsened now that I can't will people into leaving."

"Alright, alright, I'll buy groceries. But fair warning, I can't cook."

That's putting it gently. 

"Oi, watch it, I can still hear your thoughts, bud," Mark warns. Chloe scoffs.

"Nah, nah, it's cool, I'll cook."

"Ramen doesn't count."

He huffs, offended. Does _quiche lorraine avec_ _gratin_ _dauphinois et escargot de Bourgogne_ count, fucker? Is that fancy enough?

"Alright, alright, we get it, Damien, you cook."

Damien grins, victorious. Mark takes a picture of him smiling. Damien scowls, no longer victorious.

\---

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> comments and kudos are my sustenance, bless ur hearts


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> alright, it was a tricky decision, but here's the final chapter... for now! this story isn't over just yet. i'm gonna keep writing the rest as a 'sequel'/'part 2', updated just the same as this one has been. you probably won't even notice the difference. thanks for reading!!  
> no warnings. just short, sweet, and a little bit painful to have written.

xiv.

At 5:22 p.m., the day they move in, Damien discovers that there is a very small courtyard attached to their building, hidden from the world by overgrown vines and old chainlink fences and the towering heights of the surrounding buildings. The sky is lavender and steadily darkening into a deep blue-green. Someone's strung up weatherproof fairy lights, twisted into the plant life, refracting a soft pink glow across the dark teal of grass and concrete.

By 5:29, he's dragged Mark away from his unpacking to show him the space, Knife following in tow. Mark protests, tells him he's busy, tells him he's preoccupied, but he's smiling tiredly as he walks anyways, a half-step to Damien's left.

At 5:43, he's sitting in the grass with Knife, braiding strands of leaves into her short fur. A heavy chill has fallen into the air, but with one of Mark's jackets rested over his shoulders like a blanket, he barely notices. Mark sits adjacent to him, occasionally nudging Damien's knee with his feet as he hums along to the quiet music playing through his headphones.

At 5:44, Mark asks him for his phone, and Damien complies. He hands it back a few moments later with a new tab pulled open, a tutorial on how to weave flowers into chains, and Damien memorizes it before handing the phone to Mark once again. 

He plucks dandelions from the earth and begins to weave them together. The structure is almost architectural, but rogue petals and bent stems jut out in some places, making it look more organic than mathematical. 

"Don't dandelions symbolize something?" he asks quietly.

"All flowers symbolize something, I think. I'd have to look up what dandelions mean."

Damien forms the chain into a crown, braiding it neatly into shape. His hands unsuccessfully attempt to balance it onto Knife's head, and he laughs as she tilts her head to get it off. He picks it back up and places it on Mark instead. Mark gives a soft, crooked smile. His heart flutters. 

Mark places the phone on the ground between them, screen open to a short list of text.

"The dandelion means..." Damien reads from the page, in the softest voice he can muster.

Mark dusts his fingertips over the crown of flowers.

"Healing from pain, both emotional and physical."

Mark takes the crown from his head and holds it gently in his hands.

"Overcoming hardship," he continues, voice breaking, nearly a whisper, "even in difficulty."

He places it upon Damien's head instead.

"And the warmth of the rising sun," Damien concludes, looking up at Mark as the dandelions fall across his forehead.

— ☼ —

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this had been quite the journey, and i'm so thankful i've been able to share it with you all.  
> talk soon.  
> ☼


End file.
